The author's first book

Lee, Laurie ~ The Sun My Monument : Signed By The Author

First UK Printing : The Hogarth Press, London : 1944

Small 8vo., cream publisher’s boards lettered in green to backstrip; publisher’s pale green wrapper, evenly toned across the panels and spine; printed in red with list of Hogarth Library titles to the rear flap; THE BOOK with slight shelf lean to the boards; mildly toned along edges with one corner a little bruised; the odd spot throughout, mostly at the end-papers; neat contemporary ownership inscription to the front free endpaper; newspaper clipping from ‘The Listener” showing a portrait of Lee tipped-in facing title; and another to the rear free endpaper; a Very Good++ copy, in the like WRAPPER toned along the spine with a patch of toning to the rear panel; very light losses at head and foot of spine. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition of the author/poet’s first book, and No. 13 in the New Hogarth Library series. This copy signed (without dedication) by Lee in blue pen to the title page. Lee’s first collection of poetry, mostly focusing on the subject of War. Some of the poems had previously appeared in such periodicals as New Writing and Cyril Connolly's Horizon, but appear published here in book form for the first time. In the newspaper clipping at the rear of the text, the reviewer praises Lee’s “often extremely beautiful and always in some way engaging” poems, and draws comparisons with the work of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Lee had travelled extensively across Spain during the years of 1935 and 1936, remembrances of which were vividly recounted in his acclaimed memoir As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. He visited Valladolid, Segovia, Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Cádiz and Gibraltar before ending up in Almuñécar, at that time an impoverished fishing village, where he witnessed the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) before being evacuated by the British Royal Navy. Lee’s first love was always poetry, although he only attained moderate success in that vein, as evidenced by the continuation of the review: “they are curiously un-memorable” the writer continues, “brittle, scarcely rhythmical fragments of poetry loosely strung together”. Indeed, Lee’s early manuscript was rejected by Eliot in 1927 because it was “not remarkable enough”, but the poems published here, mostly on the subject of the Civil War and his travels across Spain, evoke recurring images of “the morning slender sun”, “the vulture-headed sun”, and “the battered sun’s hot cymbal” against the backdrop of a continent on the brink of war. Scarce. (S. Oliver-Jones A1)

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