The Waste Land
Boni & Liveright, 1922.
First edition, first issue bound in flexible boards with the "a" in "mountain" on page 41 and with the number on the colophon measuring 5mm tall. Number 83 of 1000 copies of the whole edition, though only about 500 are in the first issue. Original Rexene over card boards lettered in gilt in plain glassine jacket and pink paper jacket printed in black. A fine copy in fine dustwrapper and glassine, virtually as new. Largely unopened. A magnificent copy housed in a custom made full morocco box.
Eliot's masterpiece and now widely recognised as the cornerstone of modernist poetry, of which Cyril Connolly comments, "Of The Waste Land I will say nothing but that we should read it every April. It is the breviary of post-war disillusion."
The survival of the glassine and jacket in such sparkling condition is rare. It is believed that Schofield Thayer (1889-1982), a schoolfriend of Eliot, who as editor of The Dial magazine 1920-26 had included "The Waste Land" in November 1922, acquired a small number of copies of the first issue on publication which remained untouched and unopened until his death. It is likely that this is one of those copies.
Connolly 43, Gallup A6a
Stock ID: 41789
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