Notable Sales
THE WASTE LAND (1923)
ELIOT, T.S.
The first UK edition of The Waste Land, handset and printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. Octavo. Bound in the original blue marbled paper covered boards, with the title label to the upper cover printed in black surrounded with a border of asterisks.
A very good, unsophisticated copy of this notoriously fragile book. The front and rear covers are bright, the spine is toned as it often is, and there is a little wear to the spine ends and joints.
One of the iconic books of the twentieth century, the first UK edition of The Waste Land, one of around 460 copies handset by Virginia Woolf and printed at her Hogarth Press. Eliot's revolutionary poem had been published in book form in America the year before, but its appearance in the UK in this smaller edition was Eliot's preferred one, and a result of his friendship with Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
PROVENANCE: From the library of Norah Hartley (1904-1994), sister and literary executor of the novelist L.P. Hartley (1895-1972); by descent to Hartley godson Benoit Junod.