The Tasking
Privately printed at the University Press, Cambridge, 1954.
First edition. Number 56 of 100 copies privately printed for Siegfried Sassoon and Geoffrey Keynes. Original quarter cloth over marbled paper covered boards. Inscribed by Sassoon for John Masefield, "SS for J.M.". With Masefield's bookplate to the front pastedown. A near fine copy, light fading to spine.
John Masefield was a significant influence on Sassoon's early work, and later became a friend, following an introduction facilitated by Ottoline Morrell.
Indeed, the first work that introduced Sassoon to a wider audience, The Daffodil Murderer, falls somewhere between a parody and imitation of Masefield. Sassoon wrote the poem after reading Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy, chose as his nom de plume that of the protagonist of that poem, and titled it after Masefield's recent collection The Daffodil Fields.
Stock ID: 41575
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