ELIOT, T. S.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Four Quartets. First collected edition, one of 788 copies. This American edition marks the first time the poems were published together under the title by which they are now known. It is also the first hardback edition.Following Faber's individual wrappered issues of the four parts in 1940 and 1941, the works were collected for this volume. Two printings were produced prior to publication; 4,165 copies were made for the first printing, but the poor quality of the books led the publisher to destroy all but 788. These copies were sent out to retain copyright while the work was reprinted. The first printing has "first American edition" on the title page verso. "Four Quartets (1943), as the suite of four poems was titled (Eliot at one point considered calling them the 'Kensington quartets'), for a time displaced The Waste Land as Eliot's most celebrated work. The British public responded especially to the topical references in the wartime poems and to the tone of Eliot's public meditation on a shared disaster" (ODNB).

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