About this Item
This appears to be the earliest separately issued edition in English [1932] of Rimbaud's masterpiece, translated and introduced by George Frederic Lees. This being #364 of a limited edition of 600 copies published by R. A. Caton to be distributed by the Palais-Royal Bookshop in Paris, this edition likely printed in tandem with a near-identical edition of 600 copies issued under Caton's Fortune Press imprint for London distribution, both printed by the Whitefriars Press. Gilt stamped red quarter cloth, orange paper boards, pp. 1-4, 5-88, includes brief bibliography on page 88; VG book with some faint ripples to the front board, light soil to endpapers, and slightly bumped tail corners in a VG- jacket with a price sticker to the front flap, spine faded, a small hole mid-spine, some light soil and faint dampstain to front and rear panels, small closed tears to spine ends R.A. Caton (1897-1971) was an enigmatic, roguish, southwest London publisher behind The Fortune Press which would publish over 600 titles from high literature to homoerotic smut. He would publish the debuts of Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, and Cecil Day-Lewis as well as works by Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Dylan Thomas. Amis would disparagingly put Caton into five of his novels, changing his initials to L.S. (an invention by Larkin standing for lazy sod; Larkin and Amis were never paid a penny by Caton), Amis would eventually kill L.S. off in a hail of machine gun fire in The Anti-Death League. In 1931 Caton briefly became director and partner in the Parisian publishing and bookselling firm Groves & Michaux. Its bookshop was named the Librairie du Palais-Royal, which Caton utilized to sell and print his publications, present title included. This edition, and its London counterpart, appear to be the first separate publications of the poem in the English language, preceded by a translation by James Sibley Watson first appearing in The Dial, July 1920, which later appeared in a biography titled A Season in Hell: The Life of Arthur Rimbaud published by Macaulay in 1931. As I have yet to see a definitive bibliography of the work in translation, this remains conjecture. Uncommon, especially so in the fragile jacket [R.A. Caton and the Fortune Press: a memoir and hand list - Timothy D'Arch Smith 455].
Seller Inventory # ABE-1746762243514
Contact seller
Report this item