Recent Poems

SPENDER, Sir Stephen Harold

Published by Ithaca Press Ltd for Anvil Press Poetry, London, 1978

About this Item

Quarto (176 x 134mm), pp. [8]. Original maroon wrappers, printed grey dustwrapper. (Dustwrapper lightly faded on spine, minimally rubbed at edges.) A fine copy in a very good dustwrapper. ¶¶¶First edition, no. 374 of 400 copies, signed and numbered by the author. A collection of four poems -- 'From my Diary', 'Late Stravinsky Listening to Late Beethoven', 'Winter in May', and 'A Girl who has Drowned Herself Speaks' -- published in the sixty-ninth year of Spender's life, and its last phase, a period marked by the deaths of (i.a.) Auden in 1973 and Connolly in 1974; Spender's retirement from his chair in English at University College, London in 1975; and the publication of the partially-autobiographical volume The Thirties and After; Poetry, Politics, People (1933-1975) in 1978. David Leeming comments that, '[t]he most important of the four poems [in Recent Poems] is "Late Stravinsky Listening to Late Beethoven", dedicated to Sacheverell Sitwell, who had died recently and who in the poem is implicitly identified with the dying Stravinsky' (Stephen Spender: A Life in Modernism). ¶¶¶FURTHER INFORMATION: please contact us for further information about this item and prices for shipping.

Seller Inventory # 002174

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Recent Poems
• Publisher: Ithaca Press Ltd for Anvil Press Poetry, London
• Publication Date: 1978
• Binding: Original wrappers
• Edition: First edition, limited issue
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Private Press, Fine Printing, and Limited Editions
  • Poetry
  • Modern First Editions