Bookplate inside Edmund Wilson's "The American Earthquake"

This bookplate for Robert David Lewis is pasted to the inside front cover of 1958's "The American Earthquake" by Edmund Wilson.

In the book's preface, Wilson writes: "The material in this volume, a selection from my non-literary articles written during the twenties and thirties, runs more or less parallel to the literary material collected in my earlier volume, The Shores of Light, a selection of articles on books written in the same period."

The book is split into three sections:

• The Follies, 1923-1928
• The Earthquake, October 1930-October 1931
• Dawn of the New Deal, 1932-1934

An interesting retrospective of Wilson's life and work can be found in Colm Toobin's 2005 piece in The New York Times titled "'Edmund Wilson': American Critic."

I also found an interesting 2008 blog post by George Packer, in which he describes "The American Earthquake" as "obscure" and connects Wilson's decades-old observations with the current plight of the automobile industry.

For your Sunday browsing pleasure, here are some previous Papergreat posts featuring bookplates:

• German-language bookplate inside 1871 Dr. Chase book
• A War Service Library bookplate
• Peering inside 1944's "Strange Fruit" by Lillian Smith
• Herbert W. Rhodes' early 20th century bookplate
• Great links: Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie
• Bookplate Junkie shares some bookplates with Papergreat
• Potluck Monday: Bingo card, bookplate and a 1935 radio show pass
• Neat stuff from an 1880 volume of Edgar Allan Poe's works
• William L. Freyhof's cool bookplate