An Essay on Flecker.
[Corvinus Press, 1937].
Price: $10,000.00
About the item
No. 20 of 30 copies on J.B. Green unsized paper (edition of 32). 1 vols. 4to. White linen. Fine. O'Brien A198; Ridler p. 58, #41.
Item #308243
Poet and diplomat James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) burned bright and briefly. He joined the diplomatic service in 1908, trained for two years, and was posted to Constantinople in 1910, “but in September a slight fever was diagnosed as tuberculosis and he returned to England to a sanatorium. He pronounced himself cured and … went back to Constantinople in March 1911, to be transferred in April to Beirut. Flecker was not a very efficient vice-consul” (ODNB). His first formal collection of verse, The Bridge of Fire, was published in 1907, and The Golden Journey to Samarkand was published in 1913. He died in Switzerland aged thirty-one.
Lawrence knew Flecker in Beirut before the war. “Flecker probably introduced Lawrence to contemporary poetry” wrote Wilson in his introduction to Minorities (1971).
According to O'Brien, An Essay on Flecker was “written in 1925 with the intention of publication in a periodical, [and] did not appear in print until 1937”.
