A Play
INSCRIBED PRESENTATION FROM RUPERT BROOKE
Deirdre of the Sorrows A Play
Maunsel and Company, 1910.
First trade edition. Original quarter vellum over brown boards lettered in gilt to the spine and upper cover. Inscribed by Brooke as a gift, "Miss Dixon from Rupert Brooke 1913" A very good copy with the spine bumped and somewhat dusty.
A parting gift sent to the daughter of James Dixon, a Fijian civil servant with whom Brooke stayed in Souva, Fiji, on his tour of the South Seas in 1913 and 1914. Brooke bought the book in New Zealand, the next stop on his tour after leaving Fiji. In a letter to Dixon, Brooke says, "I wandered into a shop & found a few passable and possible books. A memory of your isolation in Fiji woke in me, - so I'm sending something to alleviate the heat of the summer with."
In the same letter Brooke reveals that "to prevent quarrelling" he had sent one book each to Dixon, his wife, and daughter but that "as an anti-Feminist I believe in the family unit, so each is meant for all". In addition to this edition of Synge's Deidre Of The Sorrows, the letter reveals one of the other books was a "beastly" edition of John Masefield's Nan. Nevertheless, Brooke added "as a Don and a Lecturer on Literature, I can recommend them."
Of the three books Brooke sent, this is the only one that survives.
The Dixons showed Brooke great hospitality during the Souva portion of his South Seas tour, and he remained in touch with James Dixon. A measure of the regard he held for the family is gleaned from a 1914 letter he wrote, in which he recalled, "Finding you and your household in Fiji was is the thing experience I treasure most and look back to with most delight in all my wanderings."
Stock ID: 41062
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