The Waste Land

by T.S. Eliot 

First edition.  New York:  Boni and Liveright, 1922 

Hardback is overall in VERY GOOD condition, in a slipcase.

• Black flexible covers have gilt title. 
• Boards show some exposure, smudges, scuffing, warping, edgewear.  Corners are bumped.  See photos.  
• Spine has gilt text and is faded, dimmed with frayed ends.  See photos.
• Binding is intact, with stitching visible at some openings. 
• Pastedowns and feps have some staining, scattered foxing. 
• Interior is toned, exhibits marginal toning, light edgewear.  Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• Text block edges have untrimmed edges. 
• Slip case of black paper over boards shows some bumping at opening edges.  
• PS2025.1210

64 pages. 5 x 7.5 inches

First edition, first issue of one of the most influential works of the 20th century.  Publisher's original black flexible cloth, lettered in gilt.  One of one thousand copies, this is number 16.  Contains the word "mountain" spelled correctly on page 41, "water" without the 'a' on page 22.  Housed in a black slip case.  No jacket.  Opened page edges are uneven in places.  Boards show some lightening; interior is unmarked but rather tanned.  Condition of this early first state copy is overall Very Good. 

There is probably no poem more iconic of the Modernist movement, twentieth century poetry, and recent Western cultural history than The Waste Land.  Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) had been suffering against his era for at least a year, lamenting to a friend that “the whole of contemporary politics etc. oppresses me with a continuous physical horror like the feeling of growing madness in one’s own brain.  It is rather a horror to be sane in the midst of this; it is too dreadful, too huge.  It goes too far for rage.”  Eliot channeled these feelings of disillusionment into his longest and best poem to date, The Waste Land, and he was confident that its publication would contribute toward the swelling zeitgeist of the modernist movement.

The present copy is the correct first issue, with the number stamped approximately 5mm high on the colophon and 'mountain' spelled correctly on line 339 (p. 41). 

Please see photos. More photos available upon request.

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