Bates, Katharine Lee | Complete autograph transcript of "America the Beautiful"

Bates, Katharine Lee

Autograph transcript signed ("Katherine Lee Bates") of America the Beautiful, [after 1911]

One page (234 x 142mm), mounted and framed; rectangular panel stain to center of leaf; not examined out of frame. [with:] Selected Poems of Katherine Lee Bates. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930. 8vo. Cloth-covered boards. Dust jacket; chipped and worn, split at joints, marginal water stains. [and:] A leaf with newspaper clippings about Bates and a greeting card with her poem, Christmas.

A scarce complete autograph transcript of one of the most popular patriotic songs in United States history.

"O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties, above the fruited plain!"

The poem was written in 1893, but revised in both 1904 and 1913; the text of this copy is the third and final version of the poem, as indicated by the first line of the third stanza.

Bates later recalled the inspiration for the poem, which was written during a summer spent teaching at Colorado College, Colorado Springs: "One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."

America the Beautiful was first published in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895, but gained wider popularity when the first revised text appeared in The Boston Evening Transcript on 19 November 1904. Set to the music of the hymn "Materna" by Samuel A. Ward, Bates's lyric is as well known and popular as Francis Scott Key's "Star-Spangled Banner."

A truly scarce and exceptional piece of Americana.