ELIOT, T.S.
The Waste Land.
New York: Boni and Liveright , 1922.
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“April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain”: Rare First Edition, first issue of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land
First edition, first issue of one of the most influential works of the 20th century, number 146 of 1000 numbered copies. First issue with "mountain" spelled correctly on page 41, "water" without the 'a' on page 22, and the 5 mm limitation statement. Connolly 30b; Gallup A6a. Octavo, original black flexible cloth lettered in gilt. Provenance: Stillington Hall Estate with bookplate to the pastedown. Stillington Hall, a Tudor-style cottage estate in Gloucester, Massachusetts, was built in 1922 by actor Leslie F. Bushwell for his family. The house stood directly across Gloucester Harbor from The Downs—T.S. Eliot’s boyhood summer home at 18 Edgemoor Road, now a writer’s retreat. Cape Ann, where both properties are located, features prominently throughout Eliot’s work, particularly in The Waste Land. "Indeed, maritime images rooted in Gloucester reverberate throughout Eliot's work, whether it's 'the hand expert with sail and oar' from The Waste Land or 'the ragged rock in the restless waters' and 'the sea is all about us' in The Dry Salvages, a poem that is itself named for a group of rocks off Cape Ann" (Crawford, Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land). In near fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco chemise and clamshell box. An exceptional example with noted provenance.
The Waste Land expresses with great power the disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I. In a series of fragmentary vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, it portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts, and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption. The depiction of spiritual emptiness in the secularized city--the decay of urbs aeterna (the "eternal city")--is not a simple contrast of the heroic past with the degraded present; it is rather a timeless, simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and moral evil. The poem initially met with controversy as its complex and erudite style was alternately denounced for its obscurity and praised for its modernism.
The Waste Land.
$11,000.00
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