Inexhaustible Life - A Modernist Centenary

Actions are said to speak louder than words, but the right words published at the right time themselves inspire action. We celebrate the legacy of trailblazing writers, thinkers, activists, scientists, and travellers through exceptional first editions, special copies and objects, and significant archival material.

INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE a modernist centenary

Peter Harrington l o n d o n

All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk

James Joyce’s Ulysses was published at Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company on 2 February 1922. One hundred years later, the book is still fascinating and maddening readers around the world, and the first edition occupies a central place in any modernist collector’s ideal bookshelf. Edmund Wilson, in his 1931 appraisal of the modernist movement Axel’s Castle , already understood that with Ulysses Joyce had created something for all time: “The world of Ulysses is animated by a complex inexhaustible life: we revisit it as we do a city . . . And when we reread it, we start in at any point, as if it were indeed something solid like a city which actually existed in space and which could be entered in any direction”. Though it may exhaust some readers, the text itself remains inexhaustible. We keep returning to Ulysses because, like all great works of literature, it abides as a source of ever renewable energy. Not one but three first editions of Ulysses feature here (items 45–47), one of each issue, including the coveted one-of-100 signed by Joyce, all three in the original blue wrappers. We have Joyce’s earliest obtainable publication, “The Day of the Rabblement” (41), a mischievous article printed while still a student in Dublin, alongside inscribed copies of Dubliners (43, one of the very first he handled) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (44, inscribed to a reviewer of Ulysses ). Two significant translations of Ulysses also appear: the French in a copy inscribed by Joyce to his favourite tenor (48), and the Japanese (49), inscribed by the translator Ito Sei who has added the censored Molly Bloom soliloquy back into this copy. This 100 item catalogue takes the centenary as an opportunity also to celebrate the remarkable number of other modernist masterpieces that were published or written in 1922. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land first appeared in October 1922 in the debut issue of The Criterion : we have the publisher’s own copy, included among a rare complete run of the

magazine (23). The first edition as a standalone book, published in New York later that same year, is another keystone for literature collectors, and we are pleased to have one surviving in fine condition in jacket and glassine (24). Other highlights from this literary annus mirabilis include: Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (one of forty special advance copies signed for subscribers, 95); Edna St Vincent Millay’s Ballad of the Harp Weaver , which won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize (one of only five copies printed on japon, and signed, 73); Edith Sitwell’s Façade , which she recited to a shocked audience through a megaphone (Sitwell’s own copy, 88); and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies (86), which the poet completed in a “savage creative storm” in the same month that Ulysses was hitting the shelves in Paris. The creative explosion between the wars certainly had Paris as its hotspot, featuring extraordinary characters like the “amazon” salonnière Natalie Clifford Barney (1) or the wild Harry and Caresse Crosby of the Black Sun Press (18–20, 53). Further bold expatriate publishers were Robert McAlmon of Contact Editions (2, 12, 34, 64, 65), and of course Sylvia Beach (2, 51). Beyond Paris, modernist experiments and breakthroughs were occurring worldwide, bringing into the story writers as disparate as Bulgakov (9) in Russia, Cavafy (14) in Alexandria, and even Borges (5) and García Lorca (63) in Buenos Aires. February is here – Eliot’s April is not far off. I hope this collection inspires, “mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain”.

Sammy Jay sammy@peterharrington.co.uk

Front cover image: Sylvia Beach in the doorway of her bookshop in 1921 Design: Nigel Bents Photography: Ruth Segarra Additional photography: Nigel Robinson Rear cover image of Sammy Jay, Literature Specialist: Diandra Galia

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INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE a modernist centenary

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2 BEACH, Sylvia – McALMON, Robert (ed.) Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers. Paris: Contact Editions, 1925 presentation copy from sylvia beach, which may have formed part of her library First edition, sole printing, one of 300 copies. This is a superb association copy, with a loosely inserted card from Sylvia Beach inscribed “For Bill, with love and best wishes for a Merry Christmas. A souvenir of our exhibition of Les Années Vingt, Sylvia”. The recipient was Morrill “Bill” Cody, an American diplomat in Paris who helped facilitate the exhibition at the US Embassy. Robert McAlmon’s magnificent collection of work by his peers contains important contributions by Djuna Barnes, Bryer, Norman Douglas, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, H.D., James Joyce, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Edith Sitwell, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and others. The collection has a printed dedication to Harriet Weaver. Joyce’s

1 BARNEY, Natalie Clifford. Pensées d’une Amazone. Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1920 First edition, first printing, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the half title: “au petit groupe des artistes charmants de Vence, leur amie et leur allié, Natalie C. Barney, Vence 18 avril 1920”. The Paris-based American expatriate writer Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) was known as the “Amazon” of Paris and was one of the most influential lesbian and feminist writers of the period. Her life inspired Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness , and her Paris salon at 20 rue Jacob was for 60 years the crucible of Left Bank culture. Guests included Colette, Pierre Louÿs, Mata Hari, Auguste Rodin, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rabindranath Tagore, Nancy Cunard, Peggy Guggenheim, Caresse and Harry Crosby, Sylvia Beach, and Isadora Duncan. Barney promoted women’s writing and formed an Académie des femmes in response to the all-male Académie française, while also supporting and inspiring male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote. Octavo. Original cream wrappers, titles printed in black and red, untrimmed. Minor chips to wrappers at ends, small superficial split to wrapper affecting spine titles, some general light marking and rubbing, sound, somewhat toned but clean within, very good. £1,500 [154043]

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contribution, entitled “Work in Progress”, is the introductory passage of H. C. Earwicker later published in Finnegans Wake . Hemingway’s story, entitled “Soldier’s Home”, was his first published contribution to a book or pamphlet. The exhibition Les Années Vingt: Les Écrivains Américains à Paris et Leurs Amis, 1920–1930 (“The Twenties: American Writers and Their Friends in Paris”) was mounted in Paris in 1959. It was a public exhibition of items from Shakespeare and Company’s archives and ran for ten weeks at the United States Embassy. The inscription strongly suggests that this book was part of Sylvia Beach’s own collection, exhibited on this occasion, and then presented to Cody as thanks for his involvement. (For Robert McAlmon, see items 64 and 65; for Sylvia Beach, item 51.) Octavo. Original grey wrappers, printed in black, all edges untrimmed, many unopened. Housed in an elaborate burgundy morocco and marbled paper chemise and slipcase. Some browning to wrappers, short tears to joints, some nicks to edges; a very good copy with clean contents. Chemise and slipcase worn at extremities with some splitting. ¶ Grissom, Hemingway B1; Slocum, Joyce B7. £3,750 [153851] 3 BECKETT, Samuel, & others. The European Caravan. An Anthology of the New Spirit in European Literature. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931 beckett’s first appearance in an american publication, in the striking dust jacket First edition, first printing. Containing four poems by Beckett, this was the sole volume published of an extensively planned project designed to bring a cross-section of cutting-edge world literature to the American public. The venture was never fully realised, though perhaps its lasting legacy will prove to have been as Beckett’s first appearance in a US publication.

Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green, top edge green. With dust jacket. Front hinge starting, tips rubbed. An excellent copy in the price-clipped jacket with toned spine, some nicks and chips to extremities. ¶ Federman & Fletcher 9a; b; c; d. £1,250 [96870] 4 BORDEN, Mary. The Forbidden Zone. London: William Heinemann, Ltd, 1929 one of the greatest of all wartime books by a woman First edition, first impression, an exceptional copy in the jacket, rare thus. In 1915 Chicago-born Mary Borden (1886–1968) “went to Dunkirk to work in a typhoid hospital; she remained in France, running (at her own expense) a mobile hospital at the front. In recognition of her services she received the Croix de Guerre and was made a member of the Légion d’honneur . . . [her] most enduring book is The Forbidden Zone (1929), sketches and poems written with a bleak realism that make this one of the greatest of all wartime books by a woman” ( ODNB ). This “collection of fragments”, as Borden calls it in her Preface, is dedicated to “the Poilus who passed through our hands during the war” and is divided into three parts: “The North”, “The Somme: Hospital Sketches”, and “Poems”, four of which are included in Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology (Kendall, pp. 75–84). Octavo. Original black cloth, gilt-lettered spine, shattered tree motif (reproduced from frontispiece) on front cover, grey patterned endpapers. With dust jacket. Half-tone frontispiece of “The zone at Thiepval, near the Somme, in 1916. From the drypoint by Percy Smith”; title page printed in blue and black. A fine copy in an exceptional jacket, marred only by some toning around spine and along top edge. ¶ Not in Falls or Lengel. Tim Kendall, ed., Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology , 2013. £1,500 [153778]

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5 BORGES, Jorge Luis – GÜIRALDES, Ricardo. Don Segundo Sombra. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proa, 1926 from the library of Jorge Luis Borges First edition, first printing, a major association copy, being the copy of Jorge Luis Borges, with his ownership signature dated Buenos Aires 1936 on the title page. Güiraldes and Borges each influenced the literary career of the other. They met around 1924–5, and Borges helped Güiraldes launch the magazine Proa . It was Güiraldes who gave Borges his copy of Joyce’s Ulysses , and he would often visit Borges with his guitar. “Later Borges confessed that he could never finish Güiraldes’s novel Don Segundo Sombra ; this gives us an insight into how Borges read, for he rarely finished any novels” (Wilson, p. 72). Nevertheless, Borges contributed an article on it to the magazine Sur in 1952, in which he compared the work to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn . Don Segundo Sombra , the best-known work of Güiraldes, had a significant role in the development of “gauchesque” literature. A heavily romanticised “gaucho” was a recurrent figure in South American literature from the 1870s onwards. Güiraldes redefined the character, no longer so heroic, but still presenting an elegiac view of a way of life that has passed. The novel was published to acclaim, and Güiraldes died a few months later, after a literary career generally marked without popular success. The copy was later passed to his brother-in-law, the Spanish poet and Ultraist Guillermo de Torre (1900–1971), with his illustrated ex-libris stamp to the first blank. This is one of several books with Borges’s ownership signature or annotations that appeared in the Buenos Aires sale of Guillermo de Torre’s library in 1980. Small quarto. Original brown printed wrappers. With glassine jacket. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. Light

chipping at extremities, short split at head of front joint. A very good copy. ¶ Jorge Luis Borges, “Don Segundo Sombra”, Sur , nos. 217–8, 1952; Jason Wilson, Jorge Luis Borges , 2006. £3,500 [130488] 6 BOWEN, Elizabeth. Encounters. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd, 1923 From the library of hugh walpole, her friend, admirer, and fellow novelist First edition, first impression, of the author’s first book, a collection of short stories, signed by the author on the front free endpaper. This is a wonderful association copy, with the Brackenburn bookplate of Hugh Walpole to the front pastedown. Walpole was a great admirer of Bowen’s writing and included three of her stories in his anthology A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), and, writing in his own copy of The Death of the Heart , he declared it “the most beautiful novel of 1938”. It was in 1938 that he developed a stronger friendship with Bowen and, writing to a friend, “thanked God that she and Virginia Woolf no longer frightened the life out of him, as they used to do” (Walshe). Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles and geometric square design to spine and front board in gilt, fore edge untrimmed. Binding square and tight, minor rubbing to spine ends and tips, offsetting to endpapers and a little light foxing to outer leaves, short closed tear to fore edge of pp. 177–8; a near-fine copy. ¶ Luke Thurston, Literary Ghosts from the Victorians to Modernism: The Haunting Interval , 2012; Eibhear Walshe, ed., Elizabeth Bowen: Visions and Revisions, Irish Writers in their Time , 2008. £1,750 [151587] 7 BRETON, André. Manifeste du surréalisme. Poisson Soluble. Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire, 1924

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Inscribed to a pioneer of proletarian literature First edition, service de presse copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: “A Henri Poulaille André Breton”. Poulaille and Breton were significant literary figures of the anti- Stalinist left, and both wrote for the short-lived magazine Clé , the publication of the International Federation for Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI), begun by Breton in 1938. FIARI was proposed and primarily organised by Breton, after his return to France from Mexico, where he had spent four months with Trotsky. The subsequent journal was intended as a monthly periodical, but only published two issues: January and February of 1939. It was significant as a demonstration of the intended unity between Marxists and anarchists, and the National Committee included a broad range of anti-Stalinist leftists: Poulaille (1896–1980), the autodidact son of an anarchist carpenter, was among them. Unfortunately “1939 was not an auspicious time to begin such a journal, and the proletarian-populist writers such as Martinet and Poulaille were uncomfortable with the many surrealists in the new movement” (Collins, p. 206). Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme is one of the first manifestos of the surrealist movement, published just weeks after the manifesto of opposing surrealist Yvan Goll. Both Goll and Breton published their manifestos in October 1924 and clashed repeatedly over the definition of the term “surrealism”, at one point literally fighting at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées. Posterity has awarded victory to Breton, who defined surrealism as “pure psychic automatism” and claimed the term for “his own, highly programmatic, ideological aims” (Robertson). Octavo. Original orange wrappers, titles to spine and front black, publisher’s imprint to front. With glassine jacket. A bright, firm copy, spine a little rolled and sunned, dampstain and tiny chip to foot, lightly creased with minor abrasion to rear, a few spots of foxing, light offsetting to endpapers, else fresh and internally clean. A very good

copy indeed. ¶ Cath Collins, Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador , 2010; Eric Robertson & Robert Vilian, eds., Yvan Goll – Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts , 1994. £2,250 [153113] 8 BRYHER, Winifred. Film Problems of Soviet Russia. Territet: Pool, 1929 The first English-language book on Soviet cinema First edition, first printing, scarce in such a bright jacket, of this early study of Soviet film-making by a “central figure in modernist and avant-garde cultural experimentation in the early twentieth century” (Winning). Bryher’s Film Problems of Soviet Russia approached Soviet films from purely an aesthetic perspective, avoiding knotty political questions that might hamper artistic appreciation. “This aestheticist attitude was continuous with the exhibition practices of the so-called little cinemas, the art houses of the time, and cinema clubs, which screened Soviet work back-to- back with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , Un Chien Andalou , or Rain , grouping these titles together on the basis of form and ignoring their widely divergent cultural politics” (Suárez, p. 90). The rear panel advertises Close Up , the film periodical also published by Pool and edited by Kenneth Macpherson with financial backing from Bryher. Octavo. Original red cloth, title to spine and front board in gilt. With illustrated dust jacket. Halftone frontispiece, 43 halftone plates. Cloth bright, spine ends lightly bumped, couple of spots to fore edge, internally sharp. A fine copy in very good dust jacket with small inkspot, light soiling to back panel, two minor closed tears and couple of chips. ¶ Juan Antonio Suárez, Pop Modernism: Noise and the Reinvention of the Everyday , 2007; Joanne Winning, Bryher: Two Novels , 2000. £1,500 [153544]

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10 BUTTS, Mary. Armed with Madness. London: Wishart & Company, 1928 “Eliot and I are working on a parallel” First edition, first impression, trade issue, of the author’s second novel, “a modernist treatment of the grail myth” ( ODNB ). The first edition is scarce, particularly so with the dust jacket, this being a remarkably attractive example. This novel, Butts’s first to be published in the UK, combines Modernist concerns about the spiritual wilderness of the period with the powerful symbol of redemption and healing found in the Holy Grail. In a journal entry from 1927 Butts half-jokingly complains that Armed with Madness “might well have been called The Wasteland [ sic ]. Eliot always anticipates my titles . . . Eliot and I are working on a parallel, but what is interesting is that he is working on the San[c] Grail on its negative” (Kroll, p. 159). Butts, on the other hand, uses this novel to suggest “readily available cures for the condition of barrenness and sterility illustrated in Eliot’s poem” (ibid.). Butts’s writing remained somewhat overlooked until the 1980s when several of her novels were republished and her work has continued to receive growing scholarly interest. She is “now recognized as one of the most important and original modernist authors of the inter-war years” (Blondel, p. 1). A limited issue of 100 copies with four lithographed illustrations by Jean Cocteau was also produced, as well as a US edition later in 1928. Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine slightly cocked, spine ends and tips rubbed, dent to centre of rear board and rear endpapers, corresponding puncture to rear panel of dust jacket, rear board and onto rear endpapers, light offsetting to endpapers; a very good copy, contents bright and clean, in the like jacket, spine browned, edges very lightly creased. ¶ Nicholas Blondel, The Journals of Mary Butts , 2002; Amy Clukey, “Enchanting Modernism: Mary Butts, Decadence, and the Ethics of Occultism”, Modern Fictions

9 BULGAKOV, Mikhail. Dyavoliada, rasskazy (“Diaboliad; short stories”). Moscow: Nedra, 1925 The author’s first book – banned in 1929 Rare first edition, first impression, of Bulgakov’s first book and the only one printed in the Soviet Union in his lifetime. Diaboliad contains five irreverent, satirical, and imaginative stories: the title story, the novella “The Fatal Eggs”, “No. 13, the Elpit-Workers Commune”, “A Chinese Tale”, and “The Adventures of Chichikov”. In the latter story, Gogol’s antihero from Dead Souls is transplanted to Soviet Russia, where he finds life equally bemusing. Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of the dystopian novel We (1921), who later befriended Bulgakov, hailed the author’s “true instinct in choosing a compositional setting: fiction, rooted in life, fast as in a movie . . . from the author, apparently, you can expect good work”. But the general critical reception was hostile and it is said that some of the 5,000 copies printed were confiscated. In 1929 Glavpolitprosvet, the main censorship organ of Soviet Russia, placed the book on its list of banned titles, and no further books by Bulgakov were printed in the Soviet Union during his lifetime. Octavo. Original wrappers printed in black and red. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box lettered in red by the Chelsea Bindery. Rebacked with part of the lettering on title of front wrapper supplied in facsimile, restoration to extremities of wrappers, occasional restoration to page edges, ownership inscription to wrapper and title page and a few ink annotations to the text, some marks within, restoration notwithstanding still a nice copy of a rare and fragile book in its original wrappers. ¶ Blum, Z apreshchennie knigi russkih literatorov (“Banned books by Russian authors”) 1917–1991 , #95; Sobranie Sochineniy, Mikhail Bulgakov, vol. 2, 1989. £4,500 [131768]

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utopian energy reactor which annihilates matter to produce an abundance of cheap energy. As an unexpected by-product, however, vast quantities of “the absolute” are released, racking the minds of men with religious and nationalistic fervour and precipitating a global war. Writing in the shadow of the First World War, Čapek imagined the next war over the horizon: “you should not listen to those people when they proudly say what they lived through was the greatest war of all time. We all know, of course, that in a few decades’ time we will manage to create a war which is even greater.” The illustrations and book- design are by the author’s brother Josef, who was to die in a concentration camp in 1945. Octavo. Original wrapper, titles blue to spine, front wrapper with titles and design in blue and orange. Decorative title page printed in blue and black, 20 full page black and white illustrations. Small chip to wrappers at head of spine, and some light creasing to spine and around joint folds, neatly repaired closed tear to front joint from the head, first gathering discreetly reattached. Some leaves loose as issued. Very good condition. ¶ R. D. Mullen, ed., Science Fiction Studies , no. 7, vol. 2, part 3, November 1975. £3,750 [139802]

Studies , 2014; Merve Emre, “Modernism’s Forgotten Mystic”, The New Yorker , December 2021; Jennifer Kroll, “Mary Butts’s ‘Unrest Cure’ for The Waste Land ”, Twentieth Century Literature , 1999. £2,750 [154069] 11 ČAPEK, Karel. Továrna na absolutno (“The Absolute at Large”). Román-feuilleton. Brno: Polygraphie, 1922 “In a few decades’ time we will manage to create a war which is even greater” First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the first blank to the young actress Táňa Čuprová (b. 1900) and dated in the year of publication. The recipient is noted in the Czech National Theatre archives as having started work there in this year, going on to become art director from 1945. It was at the Prague National Theatre that Čapek’s famous play Rossum’s Universal Robots had debuted in 1921. Továrna na absolutno was Čapek’s first novel, and noted as “one of the genuine masterpieces” of the science fiction genre (Mullen). Set in 1943, it imagines the invention of a seemingly

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12 CARNEVALI, Emanuel. A Hurried Man. Paris: Contact Editions, [1925] “Too quick for life” First and sole edition of the only published lifetime work by Italian-born poet Emanuel Carnevali (1897–1942), issued in Paris by Robert McAlmon’s Contact Editions. It is extremely uncommon on the market, an online search of institutional libraries showing Cambridge and Queen’s University Belfast only in the UK. After moving to the United States in 1914 at the age of 16, Carnevali became friends with poets such as William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound and his poems were published in the magazine Poetry , which was founded in 1912. Williams was dogged by ill health and returned to Italy in 1922, where he died 20 years later. Octavo. Uncut in original orange wrappers with flaps, lettered in black. A fine copy, the wrappers sharp, internally crisp. £1,000 [147824] 13 CATHER, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927 An exceedingly bright copy of the signed limited issue First edition, first impression, number 45 of 50 copies on japon, signed by the author and issued in a deluxe full vellum binding, this example in extraordinarily bright condition with the original slipcase. This major modernist novel was included in Modern Library’s list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

There were three issues of the book: 50 copies on japon, 175 copies on rag paper, and 20,000 trade copies. The novel was first published serially in Forum between January and June 1927. Octavo. Original cream parchment boards, lettering to spine in gilt, decorations to spine and front cover in gilt, publisher’s device to rear cover in gilt, top edge gilt, many gatherings unopened. Publisher’s green card slipcase with paper label to spine. Housed in a custom brown morocco-backed folding box. Spine very slightly bumped and toned; a near-fine copy. Slipcase a little worn and slightly soiled. ¶ Crane A16.a.i. £10,000 [152967] 14 CAVAFY, C. P. Poiemata (“Poems”) (1905–1915) and (1916–1918). Alexandria: Typographica Katastemata Kasimate & Iona, [printed c.1925–1930, assembled and issued c.1930] With a significant authorial correction to two lines of the poem “to sensual pleasure” An excellent example of one of Cavafy’s carefully assembled poetry collections, privately printed at Cavafy’s expense and arranged by the poet himself, here unusually copious with two volumes comprising 68 poems in all (40 in the first, 28 in the second). There are 23 hand corrections to the pagination, and a meaningful textual alteration to the poem “Hedone” (“To Sensual Pleasure”), in Cavafy’s hand. C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) lived for the best part of his 70 years in Alexandria. The city’s cosmopolitan citizenry, his “exiled” lifestyle there, and his pride in his Phanariot descendance all undoubtedly influenced the “cultural hybridism” of Cavafy’s corpus (Charalambidou-Solomi, p. 123). During his lifetime he was largely ignored by the Athenian literary world, due to his frank treatment of homosexual themes and epigrammatic style. An essay by his great admirer E. M. Forster, “The poetry of C. P. Cavafy”,

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published in the Athenaeum in April 1919, did much to establish his literary reputation in the English-speaking world as the author of some of the now most celebrated sensual poems in Western literature. The imprints of the Alexandria print-shop of Kasimate & Iona found at the foot of many of the poems are here dated between 1925 and 1930, and the table of contents at the back of each volume is dated 1930, suggesting that these volumes were assembled and issued that year. Produced relatively late in Cavafy’s life, this example likely represents a more mature take on the proper contents and order of his life’s poetry than some earlier folders or booklets. 2 volumes, octavo (245 × 155 mm). Original wrappers, titles printed to front in black and green respectively. Loose folded sheet laid in to vol. 2 printed with dates of the poems collected. Light toning to spine and edges of wrappers, some minor creasing, but entirely sound, mild toning within and a few minor marks, an exceptional survival in excellent condition. ¶ Despina Charalambidou-Solomi, “Gender Dualism in Cavafy’s Erotic Poetry”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies , vol. 21, no. 1, 2003, p. 113–125; Edmund Keeley, The Cavafy Rare Book Collection in Firestone Library , vol. 67, no. 1, Autumn 2005, pp. 140–145. £15,000 [149487] 15 CÉLINE, Louis-Ferdinand. Voyage au bout de la nuit. Roman. Paris: Editions Denoël et Steele, 1932 First trade edition, first impression, of the author’s debut novel, which won the Prix Rénaudot and influenced a generation of authors including Henry Miller, George Orwell, and Henry Green. This is an unusually nice copy in wrappers of the first printing of the trade issue, with the requisite points, not the reprinted remainder of the edition transferred to a different press. There were also 110 copies printed on special paper.

The points for the first trade printing are as follows: “Grande Imprimerie de Troyes” imprint at rear colophon, 8 pp. publisher’s advertisements at the rear on grey-blue paper dated 1932, “Le Flute Corsaire” advertised on bottom right of rear wrapper as “Sous presse” and with no imprint beneath the red frame, and a lowercase “m” printed upside down on p. 150 line 10 and p. 541 line 37 (some first printing copies are noted with only one of these; this copy has the added reassurance of both). Octavo. Original white wrappers printed in red and black. Wrappers fresh with a few minor marks, general light toning within, an excellent copy. ¶ Connolly, The Modern Movement 74; En français dans le texte 366. £3,750 [153788]

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16 COBURN, Alvin Langdon. London. With an Introduction by Hilaire Belloc. London & New York: Duckworth & Co., Brentano’s, [1909] “Twenty luscious hand-pulled photogravures” First edition, first impression, of this masterpiece of early 20th-century photography. Boston-born Coburn based himself in London from around 1906, learning how to make photogravures at the London County Council School of Photo-Engraving, and establishing a studio with two copperplate printing presses at the home he shared with “his domineering mother” in Hammersmith. These two publications, London and New York , were intended as the start of a series, exploring “the adventures of cities” each “containing twenty luscious hand-pulled photogravures” (Parr & Badger). Though Coburn had also envisaged publications on Edinburgh, Paris, Venice, Liverpool, Birmingham, Boston, and Pittsburgh, only these two titles were published. A member of the Photo-Secession group with Stieglitz and Steichen, Coburn began working within a symbolist- pictorialist framework, but he came to be influenced by modernism: “A friend of the Cubists, Vorticists and Imagists, Coburn had one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 20th century. At their best his photographs straddled the divide”. Coburn’s credentials as a modernist are further asserted in his pioneering 1916–17 series of kaleidoscopic photographs, dubbed “Vortographs” by the poet Ezra Pound – several portraits of Pound were included in the series.

Folio. Original bottle-green sheep-backed brown-grey paper covered boards, title gilt to front cover, mottled grey endpapers. With grey paper dust jacket, front panel with the title blocked to match the binding. With 20 photogravure plates, hand-pulled by Coburn, tipped on to heavy grey mottled paper. Spine sunned to brown, skilful restoration to joints and head and tail, prelims lightly foxed; jacket with tan-burn to spine, slightly rubbed and spotted, small chip at tail edge of the front panel, splits to joints now lined with Japanese tissue, some similar reinforcement along edges. A carefully restored copy of this austerely handsome but rather fragile book. ¶ Parr & Badger, I, p. 74; Roth, 101 , p. 38. £20,000 [132333]

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First edition, first impression, with the rare dust jacket: a remarkable survival, we have traced just two copies at auction since 1975. Of the two sister publications, “it is the New York volume that might be considered the more proto-modernist in spirit, not only because New York itself was the most palpably modern city, epitomized by that great leitmotif of early modernist photography, the skyscraper, but also because the form of the city, as created by these large, monolithic buildings, pushed Coburn towards a more radical way of seeing” (Parr & Badger). Folio. Original calf-backed grey boards, titles to front board gilt. With dust jacket. Housed in a custom black cloth box by the Chelsea Bindery. With 20 photogravure plates hand-pulled by Coburn mounted on heavy grey stock marbled paper. Jacket and binding professionally restored, jacket spine toned and with a few old wax stains to front panel, touch of foxing internally. A very good copy. ¶ Parr & Badger I, p. 74. £22,500 [114434]

17 COBURN, Alvin Langdon. New York. With a foreword by H. G. Wells. London & New York: Duckworth & Co., Brentano’s, [1910] One of the cornerstone photobooks of the 20th century

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Crane. Following Harry’s death in 1929 (he was found shot in the same bed as Josephine, “The Fire Princess”, one of his many lovers), Caresse continued issuing books in Paris and New York, publishing her memoir The Passionate Years in 1953, and surviving until 1970. This copy is in wrappers, as opposed to Minkoff’s leather binding. Octavo. Original white wrappers, titles black to spine and front cover, rose motif to front cover. With glassine jacket. Housed in a custom black cloth chemise and black quarter morocco slipcase, red spine labels. Illustrated with pochoir-coloured plates and vignettes by Daniel Girard. A clean, square copy, single nick to foot of spine, wrappers lightly toned, a few spots of foxing to top edge, trivial offsetting to “Harry” title page, else free from creasing and marks, near-fine. ¶ Not in Minkoff, see A2 for first edition in leather binding. £2,750 [153112] 19 CROSBY, Harry. Sonnets for Caresse. Paris: Albert Messein, Editeur, 7 October 1926 Presentation copy of the most complete edition of Harry Crosby’s first book, inscribed by Crosby to Helenka Adamowski Pantaleoni, “Helenka from Harry Paris MCMXXVII”. This copy is number 23 of 100 copies on Arches paper, with the original wrappers bound in to the hand- painted vellum as issued. There were a further seven copies issued on japon, and one on vellum. Pantaleoni (1900–1987) was a renowned actress and intellectual who founded the US Fund for UNICEF and served as the president of the US Committee for UNICEF from 1953 until her retirement in 1978. Pantaleoni met Crosby at Harvard when he was there as a student after the First World War. She remembered him at this time as “an incredibly sensitive, high- strung, poetic individual” (Wolff, p. 68). Sonnets for Caresse was first printed in October 1925 and marked the beginning of Crosby’s extraordinary literary love

18 CROSBY, Caresse. Crosses of Gold. A Book of Verse.

Paris: Léon Pichon [Black Sun Press], 1925 Caresse and Harry’s own copy

First edition, out of series from a limited issue of 100, the Crosby’s own copy with Caresse and Harry’s gilt-tooled bookplate incorporating their “Crosby Cross” (with their names crossed over one another at the “R”). Crosses of Gold was one of the first two books published by the Crosbys, and the first to incorporate the Crosby cross, in Caresse’s printed dedication to herself and her beloved Harry. Harry and Caresse Crosby were a wild and wealthy couple of expatriate Americans in Paris between the wars, who embedded themselves in the avant-garde cultural scene. They befriended the likes of Dalí and Hemingway, and founded the Black Sun Press which published Joyce, Eliot, Pound, and Hart

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21 CUMMINGS, E. E. Tulips and Chimneys. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923 Cummings’s poetic debut SIGNED First edition, first printing, of the author’s first book of poetry, signed on the front free endpaper and scarce thus. Tulips and Chimneys includes several enduring poems such as “In Just- / spring when the world is mud- / luscious . . . ”, as well as two poems on the First World War (“The bigness of cannon / is skilful . . . ” and “O sweet spontaneous / earth . . . ”). Cummings’s first book was The Enormous Room (1920), a novel based on his internment by the French during the war. His experience of prison did not destroy his love of France, and after hostilities ended he returned to live in Paris between 1921 and 1923, there writing much of the poetry that would make up this volume. In this first book Cummings’s avant-garde approach is already clear. “His eccentric use of grammar and punctuation are evident . . . though many of the poems are written in conventional language. ‘The language of Tulips and Chimneys , . . . like the imagery, the verse forms, the subject matter, and the thought, is sometimes good, sometimes bad,’ wrote Robert E. Maurer in the Bucknell Review . ‘But the book is so obviously the work of a talented young man who is striking off in new directions, groping for original and yet precise expression, experimenting in public, that it seems uncharitable to dwell too long on its shortcomings’” ( The Poetry Foundation ). Octavo. Publisher’s buckram-backed brown paper boards, printed paper label, top edge brown, others untrimmed. New York bookseller’s ticket to rear endpaper. Spine title label a little rubbed around edges, tips somewhat worn, but a remarkably fresh copy, some minor offset tape marks to endpapers, otherwise clean within and sound, very good indeed overall. £3,750 [153770]

affair. The first and second edition contained 30 and 37 poems respectively; this third was expanded to 48. The fourth edition of the following year was halved in size with only 24, making this third the most complete edition. For the Crosbys, see previous note. Octavo. Original presentation vellum, hand-painted titles to spine and border to sides, yapp edges, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, silk page marker loosely inserted. With the original wrappers bound in. Title page vignette in red. Spine a little soiled, page marker detached but retained, contents clean and bright; a near- fine copy. ¶ Minkoff A3-c; Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby , 1976. £3,750 [144892] 20 CROSBY, Harry. War Letters. Paris: The Black Sun Press, 1932 FRESH CONDITION First edition, one of 125 copies only, of this posthumously printed collection of Harry Crosby’s letters written home to his family during his traumatic, formative war experiences serving as a volunteer in the American ambulance corps. Crosby had ended his own life in a dramatic suicide pact the year before this book’s publication. The calf binding is particularly susceptible to wear and this is an unusually handsome example. Octavo. Original calf-backed marbled boards, titles gilt to spines with raised bands and olive morocco title labels, marbled endpapers. Photographic portrait frontispiece showing Crosby in his military uniform. Very light wear to extremities, an attractive, fresh copy. £2,500 [153795]

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22 CUNARD, Nancy. Poems (Two) 1925. London: The Aquila Press Limited, 1930 ADDITIONALLY Signed by the author First edition, number 107 of 150 copies, this copy signed by the author, though not called for in the limitation. This was Cunard’s fourth work of poetry. “Nancy Cunard was an outlaw, as she had envisaged in her poems, a serious political activist, who lived an intense and lonely life dedicated to her causes . . . Her name is important in the history of surrealism and le tumulte noir in Paris, the struggle against Franco and fascism in the Spanish Civil War, and the twentieth-century global struggle for the recognition of African culture and the fight for racial justice” ( ODNB ). The Aquila Press was short-lived and closed the same year that this volume was published. The managing director Wyn Henderson took over the running of Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press so that Cunard could focus on producing Negro Anthology . Small folio. Original red and white patterned-paper boards designed by Elliott Seabrooke, printed paper label to front board, untrimmed. Covers slightly soiled and rubbed, occasional mark to contents, but overall a very good, bright copy. £1,250 [152736] 23 ELIOT, T. S., & others. The Criterion. London: R. Cobden- Sanderson, 1922–26 With the publisher’s own copy of the first volume, including the first appearance of “The Waste Land” A rare complete run of The Criterion under its original title, including the scarce and highly sought-after first volume,

which featured the first appearance in print of “The Waste Land”, here with an excellent provenance, being the publisher’s copy with the pencil ownership inscription, “R. Cobden-Sanderson, 15 Upper Mall, W6”. Founded with the financial backing of Lady Rothemere, The Criterion was the leading literary periodical of the 1920s and 1930s, publishing, among others, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, D. H. Lawrence, and W. B. Yeats. Eliot’s wide literary perspective situated the magazine at the centre of not only the British but also the wider European intellectual

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scene, and over the years The Criterion included early British appearances of Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, and Jean Cocteau. It was taken over by Faber in January 1926, when it was retitled The New Criterion and later The Monthly Criterion . Notably, volume I also includes works by Dostoyevsky (translated by S. S. Koteliansky in collaboration with Virginia Woolf, who though she did not read Russian, taught herself enough to understand Koteliansky’s problems with translation, and polished Koteliansky’s rough English translation); T. Sturge Moore; May Sinclair; Hermann Hesse;

and Valery Larbaud (reviewing Joyce’s Ulysses which had just been published). 12 volumes, octavo. Original card wrappers printed in black and red. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. Wrappers somewhat browned, nicked and chipped, a few old faint splash marks, repair to front wrapper of vol. XI, some minor loss to spines, contents clean. A well-preserved set of this vulnerable and rare publication. ¶ Gallup C135; Kirkpatrick C232, 238. £12,500 [146274]

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24 ELIOT, T. S. The Waste Land. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922 A fine copy with the dust jacket and publisher’s glassine First edition in book form, first printing, number 83 of 1,000 copies, and rare with the dust jacket and publisher’s glassine. With unopened gatherings, this is a near-fine example. Arguably the most significant poem of the 20th century, The Waste Land was first published in The Criterion in October 1922, a couple of months before book publication. This is the first issue in the flexible cloth and with the stamped numbers in the colophon 5 mm high. Donald Gallup notes that “approximately the first 500 copies bound have the flexible cloth binding and figures 5 mm high in the colophon”. Line 339 on page 41 has “mountain” with dropped text, a variant state within the first printing but not an issue point. Though without mark of ownership, this copy is likely one of a small number of exceedingly fine copies emerging from the estate of of American poet and editor Schofield Thayer (1889–1982). As editor of The Dial magazine he had included “The Waste Land” in November 1922. Thayer awarded Eliot the $2,000 prize for the year, the announcement for which appears on the front of the dust jacket. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, edges untrimmed. With dust jacket and publisher’s glassine. Housed in a custom chemise and black morocco slipcase. Slight browning to front endpapers, jacket spine panel faintly sunned, trivial nicks to extremities of jacket and glassine, otherwise a fine copy, fresh and crisp. A beautiful example. ¶ Gallup A6a. £125,000 [152808]

25 ELIOT, T. S. The Waste Land. London: printed by Giovanni Mardersteig on the hand-press of the Officina Bodoni in Verona,

for Faber & Faber, 1961 [1962] a magnificent edition

First Bodoni edition of Eliot’s masterpiece, number 286 of 300 copies signed by the poet. This is a magnificent piece of book

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production executed in Verona under the direction of Giovanni Mardersteig, the greatest printer of the 20th century. The Waste Land – arguably the most significant poem of the 20th century – was first published in The Criterion magazine in 1922. This copy was owned by D. G. Bridson (1910–1980), the distinguished radio producer, poet and correspondent of Eliot. On 11 January 1938 Bridson produced a 45-minute broadcast of The Waste Land as part of a BBC series entitled Experimental Hour .

Quarto. Original white quarter parchment marbled boards, lettering to spine in gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. With original marbled slipcase. Bookplate of D. G. Bridson to front pastedown. Edges of slipcase slightly rubbed and with minor abrasions; a fine and bright copy. ¶ Gallup A6d. £6,000 [152583]

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26 ELIOT, T. S. Poems 1909–1925. London: Faber & Gwyer, 1925 [1926] His first retrospective collection, and his first signed limited edition First edition, copy number 3 of 85 copies signed by the author, printed on handmade paper and specially bound. This was Eliot’s first signed limited edition and his first retrospective collection. Ordinary copies were published on 23 November 1925, with the signed copies published 6 January 1926 at 25 s. The famous dedication to The Waste Land (“For Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro”), originally inscribed by Eliot in the presentation copy he gave Pound, is here printed for the first time. Demy octavo. Original white linen bevelled boards, titles in gilt direct to spine, boards panelled in blind, edges untrimmed. Very mild toning to spine panel, minimal scuffs to two corners, but an exquisite copy, fresh and near fine. ¶ Gallup A8b. £12,500 [154064] 27 FAULKNER, William . The Marble Faun. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1924 Faulkner’s first book, inscribed twice to the man who inspired Dink Quistenberry’s name First edition, sole printing, presentation copy of Faulkner’s first book, inscribed on the front free endpaper, “To Dink

Cearley from Bill Faulkner” and signed and dated 31 December 1924 on the title page. Fittingly for this debut collection of juvenile poems (described in the Preface as being “drenched in sunlight and colour as is the land in which they were written, the land which gave birth and sustenance to their author”), the recipient of this rare presentation copy was a young friend from Oxford, Mississippi. C. L. (“Dink”) Cearley was in 1924 the 19-year-old son of Abb W. Cearley (69 years old, married at age 36) and Mollie Cearley. Abb was the jailor in Oxford, Mississippi, and would probably have been elected to that position. Abb and Mollie were both born in Mississippi, as were all four of their parents. The Cearley family (including several siblings) lived on the premises of the jail. In 1931 there is a record of a minor ($2) payment to a Mr Woodward “in the Dink Cearley Case” and there are occasional references to Cearley Service Station, but otherwise the family seems to have lived quietly. The fact that Faulkner uses the familiar form of his own forename suggests that he was on easy terms with the younger Dink. Faulkner employed his unusual forename for the character Dink Quistenberry in The Town , who marries into the Snopes family and runs the Jefferson (formerly Snopes) Hotel. The Marble Faun is the author’s first book, of which only 500 of the projected 1,000 copies were printed and some 300 of those were later pulped. The official publication date was, after some delay, fixed as 15 December 1924 and the earliest dated presentation copies were signed on the 19th. Octavo. Original mottled green boards, white paper title labels to front board and spine printed in green. With dust jacket. Housed in a black

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27, 28

(1928). Out of this frustration came The Sound and the Fury : “I continued to shop [ Sartoris ] about for three years with a stubborn and fading hope, perhaps to justify the time which I had spent writing it. This hope died slowly, though it didn’t hurt at all. One day I seemed to shut a door between me and all publishers’ addresses and book lists. I said to myself, Now I can write. Now I can make myself a vase like that which the old Roman kept at his bedside and wore the rim slowly away with kissing it. So I, who had never had a sister and was fated to lose my daughter in infancy, set out to make myself a beautiful and tragic little girl” (Faulkner). Octavo. Original white cloth-backed black and white patterned paper boards, titles to spine in black, patterned endpapers, top edge blue. With dust jacket. Spine ends faintly toned, else sharp and bright, an exceptionally nice copy in the dust jacket, spine panel sunned (as the fugitive red is notoriously prone to do so), a little loss to ends, extremities rubbed and slightly creased, couple of shallow chips. ¶ Sarah Churchwell, “Rereading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner”, The Guardian , 20 July 2012. William Faulkner, “An Introduction for The Sound and the Fury ”, The Southern Review , 1972, pp. 705–10, available online. £10,000 [151153]

quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Front inner hinge starting, small production flaw to rear hinge, small tear to top of front joint of jacket, but a stunning copy of a famously vulnerable publication. ¶ With thanks to John Ward, professor in the English department at Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, for information about the recipient. £50,000 [118733] 28 FAULKNER, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929 In the first issue dust jacket First edition, first printing, first issue dust jacket, with Humanity Uprooted advertised at $3.00 on the rear panel. The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner’s own favourite of his works: “It’s a real son-of-a-bitch . . . This one’s the greatest I’ll ever write” (Churchwell). This is his fourth novel, and the second to be set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha Country, Mississippi, Faulkner’s “apocryphal country” (ibid.) Faulkner’s first Yoknapatawpha story, Flags in the Dust , was initially turned down by his publishers, and only published after heavy editing as Sartoris

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