May 2024
Eliot, T.S. Poems 1909 – 1925
28-05-24 Filed in: Books
London: Faber & Gwyer LTD, 1925. First Edition, First Printing. Number 1 of the signed limited edition of eighty-five copies, seventy-five of which were for sale. Spine slightly darkened, else a fine copy on hand-made paper in fine original white buckram boards lettered in gilt on the spine; sides bordered in blind; all edges uncut (the first opening unopened). Collected in this volume are: Prufrock (1917), Poems (1920), The Waste Land (1922), and “The Hollow Men” (1925).
Where to begin with this copy of this book?
Well, you rarely get to buy Number 1 of any limited edition, let alone one of such impact.
Cyril Connolly writes in The Modern Movement – 100 Key Books from England, France and America 1880 – 1950: “30(b) … [The Waste Land] Becoming as hard to obtain as ‘Prufrock’; it is better to search for the Poems 1909 – 1925, perhaps his most important book.”
This book also contains Eliot’s first publication of “The Hollow Men”; maybe the most quoted of Eliot's poetry:
“…
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Price: CHF 37’500