Moses. A Play.

First edition, privately printed and scarce, especially so in collectable condition. This copy was given as a gift by Rosenberg's patron, Sydney Schiff, to the actress Lydia Sherwood, inscribed by him on the front wrapper verso, "To Lydia Sherwood, from Sydney S., Jan 24, '26". This copy has ten manuscript corrections to the text, as usual, possibly by Rosenberg's sister Mina. Rosenberg first met Schiff (1868-1944), a translator of Proust's Recherche and a modernist financier, in the spring of 1915, and soon joined Eliot, Joyce, and Wyndham Lewis as one of his beneficiaries. "Schiff became Rosenberg's 'absentee' patron, in the sense that he put no pressure on him to produce works in return for occasional support, and he was available whenever Rosenberg needed him" (Cohen, p. 116). The two men, both Jewish, corresponded throughout Rosenberg's time in the trenches, where the poet faced antisemitism from his superiors and his fellow privates. Rosenberg's "friendship with Schiff also contributed to his growing consciousness of being a Jew" (p. 128), and, following the publication of Moses, Schiff was instrumental in distributing copies of the book in literary circles in London. Under Schiff's wing, Rosenberg became one of the most celebrated British poets of the period, noted in particular for his war poems, several of which are printed here alongside the titular verse-drama. "Rosenberg's poems from the front show him to have absorbed the great tradition of English pastoral poetry, but his tone is different: more impersonal, informal, ironic, and lacking the indignation characteristic of the work of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Rosenberg was killed on the western front near Fampoux, north-east of Arras, on 1 April 1918 and buried in an unmarked grave. His remains were discovered eight years later and reinterred under a headstone in the Bailleul Road east cemetery in Flanders" (ODNB). Reilly, p. 279. Joseph Cohen, Journey to the Trenches: The Life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918, 1975. Small octavo. Original yellow wrappers printed in black. Housed in a custom yellow quarter morocco slipcase and chemise by James Macdonald Co., New York. Wrappers toned, spine slightly worn and split at foot, still sound, a very good copy of a fragile publication.…