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Basic Books, Published 2006. Hardcover, xxxiii, 429 pp.; 25 cm; edited by Margaret M. Caffrey and Patricia A. Francis, foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated with black-and-white photographs and portraits on eight unnumbered plates.
In very good condition with a very good dust jacket. Cream paper-covered boards, black paper spine, gilt lettering on spine, mild shelf and edge wear. Binding tight. Faint traces of an erased pencil notation to the verso of the rear free endpaper, pages otherwise clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket designed by Nicole Caputo reproduces an airmail envelope postmarked 1949, with a field photograph of Mead laid over it, light bumping to edges, mild shelf wear, creased corner tip to rear flap. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. First published gathering of Mead's correspondence, drawn from her papers at the Library of Congress and spanning nearly sixty years. Arranged not chronologically but by relationship, six sections covering family, husbands, lovers, friends, colleagues, and the extended household of later life, which lets the same decades be read several times over from different intimacies. Includes the correspondence with Ruth Benedict, Mead's mentor, colleague and lover, and frank material on her three marriages that had not previously appeared in print. Caffrey is the author of a biography of Benedict; Francis curated the Library of Congress centennial exhibition on Mead in 2001-2002. Bateson, Mead's daughter by Gregory Bateson, contributes the foreword. Contents: Brief Chronology of Margaret Mead's Life; Acknowledgments; Foreword, Mary Catherine Bateson; Introduction, The Logic of Human Relationships; Family, Bread and Butter and Applesauce; Husbands, Starved for Likemindedness; Lovers, Continuingly Meaningful; Friends, A Genius for Friendship; Colleagues, What Is Important Is the Work; Growing Family, Kith and Kin; Epilogue; Notes; Selected Works of Margaret Mead; Index.