Guillaume. Alcools. Poèmes (1898–1913).

by APOLLINAIRE

£12,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Revolutionising Poetry APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume. Alcools. Poèmes (1898–1913). [ Lyons: E. Arrault et Cie for ] Paris: Mercure de France . 1913. 8vo. Publisher’s printed wrappers with beige caduceus and winged helmet device to upper cover; pp. 204, [2 (colophon, blank)]; with half-title and lithographic frontispiece portrait by Pablo Picasso, with tissue guard, winged helmet device to title; small chip to lower cover, slight creasing to spine, a few minute chips to spine subtly repaired, text block slightly coming away from spine at head of last few quires; sporadic light foxing, some browning to last 2 ff.; else a very good copy, partially uncut. Rare first edition of this pivotal collection of poems by Apollinaire, instrumental in cementing his reputation, with a striking Cubist frontispiece portrait of the author by his friend Picasso, our copy in the original printed wrappers. Born Wilhelm Apollinaris Kostrowicki in Rome to a Polish–Lithuanian mother, Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) moved to Paris c. 1898–1900, where he became a pioneer in Cubist and Modernist circles, befriending the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Rouveyre, Braque, Duchamp, and Metzinger, coining the term ‘Surrealism’ in 1917, seven years before the emergence of Breton’s Manifesto. Apollinaire had published his first volume of poetry, Le Bestiaire , in 1911, but it is Alcools – the first work in which the poet chose to abandon punctuation entirely – that his reputation rests, along with his typographically ex

• Binding: Hardcover

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