In the RARE Dust Jacket
Poems with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1920.
Price: $17,500.00
About the item
First edition. Photogravure frontispiece portrait, with tissue guard. ix, 33 pp. 1 vols. Small 4to. In the RARE Dust Jacket. Red cloth, with printed paper spine label. Usual paste offset to flyleaves. Fine copy in the original dust jacket, spine panel faintly toned with a small nail chip at center, and smaller loss at foot (not touching imprint). An outstanding copy of a book that is almost invariably worn, and almost never seen in jacket. Keynes, B2; Connolly 100, 36; Hayward, 337.
Item #338745
First edition of Owen’s posthumously published first book.
One of the landmarks of Twentieth Century poetry and unquestionably the finest collection of poems to come out of the Great War, including “Strange Meeting”, “Anthem For Doomed Youth”, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Futility”. Owen was killed at the Front a week before the Armistice in November 1918. As Owen’s Preface, found among his papers after his death, so poignantly observes: “This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”.
