Collected Poems

First edition. 8vo. Pp. xv, 205, [3]. Blue cloth, lettered in silver to spine. Appendix, notes, biographical note and bibliography. Light blue dustwrapper, priced at £4.00 net to the lower front flap.

The first complete translation of Cavafy's poetry, consisting of 174 poems, they capture the Alexandrian's mixture of formal and idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies.

They include all those poems published in the Greek edition of Cavafy's poems edited by George Savidis (Athens: Ikaros, 1963), together with a selection from the volume of Unpublished Poems, also edited by George Savidis (Athens: Ikaros, 1968) and first published in an earlier English version in the volume C.P. Cavafy: Passions and Ancient Days (New York: Dial Press, 1971).

"[A] Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe," in E. M. Forster's inimitable phrase, Cavafy didn't live to see a collected edition of his acknowledged "canon" until the 1935 Alexandrian publication by the painter, Takis Kalmouchos. "[This] edition of the collected poems, published in 1975, remains unsurpassed." –Paul Bailey, The Guardian

Light offsetting to endpapers, toned top and fore-edges, in a complete dustwrapper with faintly browned extremities, else Fine.