C. Day Lewis ⦗Cecil Day-Lewis, 1904–1972⦘
Limited first edition. Slim 8vo. Pp. 55, [1]. Vermilion cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Hogarth Living Poets, Second Series – No. 1. No. 53 of a limited edition of 100 copies, signed by the Author to limitation page. Published in March 1933, at 7s. 6d., simultaneously with the 500 copies of the trade edition.
Sans the scarce cocoa-brown dustwrapper, designed by John Banting. Slightly soiled boards, light foxing to endpapers, else contents clean and bright.
A political allegory in thirty-six lyrics, arranged over four parts, and dedicated to W. H. Auden by the subsequent British Poet Laureate. It celebrates an ideal world lying just beyond the horizon in which body and spirit can be as one. A reputation-making collection, it won him rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and spurred T. E. Lawrence to hail him publicly as "the one great man in England".
[Woolmer 318A]