Wilfred; Siegfried SASSOON ( introduction ); [Edith SITWELL]. Poems by Wilfred Owen.

by OWEN

£7,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

The Poet, the Editors, and the Scholar OWEN, Wilfred; Siegfried SASSOON ( introduction ); [Edith SITWELL]. Poems by Wilfred Owen. London. Chatto Windus. 1920. 4to. Original red buckram, printed paper spine label; pp. ix, [iii], 33, [iii]; photographic portrait frontispiece with tissue guard; slightly sunned, label toned but legible, corners and extremities rubbed, spine chipped at head and foot, some browning to endpapers, light abrasion to front pastedown (erased old inscription ‘Esmé …’); a very good copy; half-title inscribed by Edith Sitwell to Joseph Cohen (‘For Joseph Cohen | who protects this great poet | in memory of a most |happy evening’), dated 9 April 1957, from Cohen’s library with his small printed shelflabel to rear pastedown, two loosely inserted printouts, highlighted and annotated on ‘Dulce et decorum est’ and on the present edition of Owen’s poems presumably in Cohen’s hand. A remarkable association copy of the first collection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, widely considered the finest poems to emerge from the First World War, this copy inscribed by Edith Sitwell, the volume’s acknowledged though uncredited editor, to Tulane University professor Joseph Cohen (d. 2013), scholar of First World War poetry. Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) died one week before the Armistice, his mother reportedly receiving news of his death as bells were tolling to announce the war’s end. Only four of his poems were published during his lifetime, but he is best remembered for a group of po

• Binding: Hardcover

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