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Isaac Rosenberg. Youth. London: [Privately Printed], I. Narodiczky, printer, 1915....
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Description
With a manuscript poem
Isaac Rosenberg. Youth. London: [Privately Printed],
I. Narodiczky, printer, 1915.8vo. Original printed wrappers; cloth folding case.
FIRST EDITION. WITH A MANUSCRIPT POEM ADDED AT END, and with four lines of manuscript revisions added on slips pasted over the earlier printed text of one poem ("The One Lost," p. 14). A scarce work, written by one of England's finest WWI poets, who was killed in service in France in 1918.
At the end of the text (p. 18), Rosenberg has written out in ink his 15-line poem "Who Loses the Hour of the Wind?", from 1915 (but not included in this collection). The poem here is entitled "Epilogue," and contains a few variations from the published version (the words or punctuation in brackets denote version as published in the printed text). The poem reads:
"Not lost [Who loses] is the hour of the wind
Where the outer silence swings.[?]
But frail - but pale, are the things
We seek, & the seekers blind.
They seek us on broken wings.
No cold kiss blown from the surge
Of the dark tides of the night.
We sleep & blind is their flight
The dreams of whose kisses urge
The soul to endure its plight.
Blown words whose root is the brain,
Live over your ruined root.
For other mouths is the fruit
And the songs so rich with pain
Of a splendour whose lips were mute."
RARE: any autograph poetry by Rosenberg is of considerable rarity; the only other manuscript poems recorded at auction were an 8-line poem, "So Innocent You Spread Your Net," on a page removed from an album, which sold at Bonhams in 2013; and a faint draft of a 7- or 8-line poem in pencil written on the verso of a letter to Edward Marsh, which sold in 1983. According to the note in the Bertram Rota Ltd. catalogue of the Simon Nowell-Smith collection, this copy was originally given to David Bomberg in April 1915 and acquired by J. Isaacs in 1922.
Condition: Wrappers toned; some chipping at edges reinforced with silk. Title-page lightly toned; soft horizontal impression across the upper margins throughout.
Provenance: Simon Nowell-Smith (bookplate); Judith Adams Nowell-Smith (bookplate); purchased from Bertram Rota Ltd., London (Catalogue No. 300, Simon Nowell-Smith Collection, item 619). From the William A. Strutz Library.
View all of [The William A. Strutz Library ]
Auction Info
2024 June 27 Important English and American Literature: The William A. Strutz Library, Part I, Rare Books Signature® Auction #6295 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
June, 2024
27th
Thursday
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