Description

Easton Press leather edition of Frank McCourt's "Tis: A Memoir," a SIGNED FIRST EDITION, Personally signed by FRANK McCOURT, one of 1600 copies, published in 1999. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has camel tan French moire silk end leaves, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, satin book marker, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edge--in FINE condition. Frank McCourt, who lived from 1930---2009, was born in the U.S. but his family could not succeed financially and shamefully returned to Limerick, Ireland. McCourt wrote: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived it all"---so opens the 1996 autobiography ANGELA'S ASHES, the first book by a previously unknown 66-year-old New York City high school English teacher. "Angela's Ashes" describes McCourt's youth in slums of LIMERICK, IRELAND, a life of poverty, deprivation, disease and death dominated by brutal schoolmasters and priests, a charming but alcoholic father, and a loving but depressed mother, Angela. "Tis" answers young Frank, returning to the country of his hopes. McCourt wrote: "When you are Irish and you don't know a soul in New York and you're walking along Third Avenue with trains rattling along on the El above there's great comfort in discovering there's hardly a block without an Irish bar: Costello's, the Blarney Stone, the Blarney Rose, P.J. Clarke's, the Breffni, the Leitrim House, the Sligo House, Shannon's. Ireland's Thirty-two, the All Ireland. I had my first pint in Limerick the day before I turned sixteen and it made me sick and my father nearly destroyed the family and himself with the drink, but I'm lonely in New York, and lured in by Bing Crosby on jukeboxes singing "Galway Bay" and blinking green shamrocks the likes of which you'd never see in Ireland. McCourt describes being sent to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, his experiences in Hamburg, Germany and later in Stuttgart during WW II. In Germany, he writes: "Sometimes I think I'd be the best Catholic in the world if they'd only do away with priests and let me talk to God there in the bed." McCourt describes his return to Belfast and Dublin to visit his grandmother. Entering college on the GI bill, McCourt is allowed to only take two courses at first at NYU. College is fascinating to McCourt, who writes: "When I'm discovering Sean O'Casey, Lady Gregory, or Yeats, I have to look them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica to learn how the famous Irish writers were. The second memoir, chronicles his struggles and triumphs as a penniless high-school drop-out from Ireland pursuing the elusive American dream. McCourt describes his poorly educated high school English students, their struggles, their triumphs, their failures, and his joy in teaching. McCourt's English students do not want to read GIANTS IN THE EARTH and SILAS MARNER, standard required reading in the 1950s, but they do enjoy having "Mr. McCoy" tell them stories about Ireland and some of the girls think "he's cute!" 367 pages. I offer Combined shipping.