New Poems 1942: An Anthology of British and American Verse.

WILLIAM, Oscar [Editor]; Dylan Thomas; Wallace Stevens; W.H. Auden; Marianne Moore; Robinson Jeffers; Randall Jarrell; Delmore Schwartz; Conrad Aiken; Muriel Rukeyser; Stephen Spender; Robert Penn Warren.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 138329

Mount Vernon, N.Y: Peter Pauper Press, 1942.

First edition, signed limited issue of the second in a series of wartime poetry anthologies selected by Oscar Williams, this being the first to be issued as a signed limited edition. Octavo, original three quarter buckram over marbled boards, top edge gilt. One of 26 lettered copies available for sale and signed by 31 of the 32 contributors (W. R. Rogers is absent as is the case with all copies), this is copy V (of 58 as 32 copies were reserved for the contributors). Signed by Conrad Aiken, Kenneth Allott, W. H. Auden, George Barker, John Peale Bishop, R. P. Blackmur, Hugh Chisholm, Gene Derwood, Richard Eberhart, William Empson, Jean Garrigue, Horace Gregory, Alfred Hayes, Ruth Herschberger, Randall Jarrell, Robinson Jeffers, C. Day Lewis, Archibald Macleish, Louis Macneice, Marianne Moore, Howard Nemerov, Frederic Prokosch, Muriel Rukeyser, Delmore Schwartz, Winfield Townley Scott, Karl Shapiro, Theodore Spencer, Stephen Spender, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Robert Penn Warren, and Oscar Williams. In near fine condition with a remnant of the original glassine. Housed in the original publisher’s slipcase which is in very good condition. Rare and desirable in the original binding.

"Poetry is an unacknowledged war industry. It is a known but unmitigated error of many intelligent people to look down on poetry as if it were a feather in the hat on a stormy day, curlicues on the fringe of nothing, play for an idle moment between major issues. Hence the infinite indifference to poetry in a society badly in need of it, but offering to it, as to Christianity, a meaningless lip service. Poetry is a necessity wearing the trapping of a luxury. It is a way to live, and a way to evaluate that way. It is a way of seeing, and therefore of believing" (Oscar Williams, Introduction).