WITH A HANDWRITTEN LETTER AND EPHEMERAL ITEMS RELATING TO AUDEN'S MEMORIAL SERVICE.

AUDEN, W. H. ~ The Dyer’s Hand & other essays.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Faber and Faber, London: 1963.

Large 8vo., green cloth lettered and lined in gilt to spine; together in the black and red printed dustwrapper (neatly clipped); THE BOOK a little bumped at spine tips, with a couple of marks to edges and paste-downs, still near-fine; THE WRAPPER very good ++ to near-fine, a little darkened to folds with some nicks and chips to edges, particularly upper edge and head of spine, a couple of short closed tears, the longest 2.5cm in length, neatly and indiscernibly glued to verso. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION thus collected together. This copy comes together with an original ALS from Auden to a Mr Jones, dated January 22nd from Christ Church Oxford in which he refers to the present book. "I myself have written about D. H. Lawrence", he writes, "Robert Frost or Marianne Moore in my collection of essays 'The Dyer's Hand' (Faber)". Three further ephemeral items are included: two memorial service addresses, one dated Wednesday October 3rd 1973 and the other 2nd October 1974, the latter with a compliments slip. The address in the USA was the service held at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, at which a memorial was unveiled for Auden. Standing on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan's Morningside Heights, the impressive building is famed for its Gothic architecture, and features a 'Poets Corner' which seeks to honour, induct and celebrate acclaimed literary figures. A wonderful collection of prose writings, including many of the lectures delivered by Auden while he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Though Auden's oeuvre was poetry (and most centrally Shakespearean poetry), subjects here range from art to life in general. "A poem must be a closed system", he writes in his introduction, "but there is something, in my opinion, lifeless, even false, about systematic criticism. In going over my critical pieces, I have reduced them, when possible, to sets of notes because, as a reader, I prefer a critic's notebook to his treatises." Scarce with these ephemeral items.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good ++