CROWLEY, Aleister, as H. D. Carr; RODIN, Auguste (illus.).

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Rosa Mundi; Rosa Coeli; Rose Inferni. Three suites of privately published poems written by Crowley for his then-wife, Rose Edith Kelly. Most copies of these fragile books were damaged or destroyed after the warehouse they were stored in flooded; surviving copies in collectible condition are scarce.The frontispiece to each poem is a reproduction of an artwork Rodin presented to Crowley during a visit in 1903. Rodin gave him ten of these pictures: Crowley printed seven in Rodin in Rhyme, and the remaining three here. Crowley borrowed the surname of Rodin's wife, Katie Carr, as his pseudonym.Crowley reflected on Rosa Mundi in his partial autobiography. "When I published this poem, which I did privately under the pseudonym of D. H. Carr, from the feelings of delicacy, [Oscar] Eckenstein was actually shocked. He did not care much for my poetry as a rule; but he thought Rosa Mundi the greatest love lyric in the language. (As a cold fact, its only rival is Epipsychidion.) But he held it too sacred to issue. 'It ought,' he said, 'to have been found among his papers after his death'" (Crowley, p. 375).The three books were issued in editions of 500 copies each: 488 on handmade paper, 10 on China paper, and 2 on vellum. These copies of Rosa Inferni and Rosa Coeli are from the handmade paper issue. Rosa Mundi is one of 10 on China paper.

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