THE CULTIVATION OF CHRISTMAS TREES. An Ariel Poem.

by ELIOT, T. S.; illustrated by JONES, David; AUDEN, W. H. (his copy):

$17,128 · Offered by Biblio

First edition · Signed

London: Faber and Faber. 1954. First edition. First edition. Inscribed presentation copy from T. S. Eliot to W. H. Auden. Publisher s original stitched blue paper covers printed in black. One full page colour illustration and smaller calligraphic work at the foot of the poem by David Jones. A very good copy, the binding firm, the covers just a little toned and creased. The contents are clean throughout. Housed in a bespoke dowel spine chemise and slipcase. Inscribed by the author in black ink on the title page For Wystan / from / Tom / Christmas 1954 . A remarkable association copy, the inscription from one giant of twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry to another (the other). Eliot, born in St. Louis, moved to England (via Harvard and Paris) with a scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford, in 1914 and soon became the very model of an English man of letters. ( Come to lunch on Sunday , Virginia Woolf wrote to Clive Bell, Tom is coming [ ] in a four-piece suit .) Auden, meanwhile, crossed the Atlantic in the other direction. Although they were temperamentally leagues apart, Auden revered Eliot, declaring after the older poet s death in 1965 that no future changes and fluctuations in taste will consign his work to oblivion ; Eliot admired Auden and clearly knew him to be the greatest poet of his generation ( This fellow is about the best poet I have discovered in several years , he wrote to E. McKnight Kauffer in 1930). Auden was introduced to Eliot s poetry in 1926 by

• Publisher: London: Faber and Faber. 1954
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: unknown

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