New York, Random House, 1971, 1971. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 366 p. illus., facsims., plan, ports. 25 cm. ; ISBN: 0394449231; 9780394449234 LCCN: 69-16452 ; LC: DA86.22.H27; Dewey: 914.2/03/550924 ; OCLC: 132596 ; orange and black cloth with gold lettering ; no dustjacket ; ex-lib, stamps, label ; Contents : The questions -- The voyage -- The Patteran -- The Island -- In the present : The search for Thomas Hariot -- Lost, foundered and found ; "Rukeyser's last prose biography, The Traces of Thomas Hariot (1971), charts the life of the Elizabethan navigator, astronomer and mathematician who was friends with Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, but about whom little is known"--Catharine Gander ; During her five-decade literary career, Rukeyser provoked varying critical response; yet her passionate contribution to the contemporary literary and political scene cannot be doubted. An outspoken "spokespoet," she was always where the political action was. As a young reporter from Vassar, she covered the 1932 Scottsboro Trial; some forty years later, she was jailed for her anti-Vietnam protests in Washington, D.C. So closely aligned is her activism to her art that several reviewers believe that the history of midcentury America can be garnered from her poetry. Yet, along with her outrage, Rukeyser's poetry is marked by optimism in a way that is reminiscent of Walt Whitman's verse. ; VG.