The Waste Land.

ELIOT, T.S.

Item Number: 143670

New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922.

First edition of one of the most influential works of the 20th century, number 110 of 1000 numbered copies, mixed state (with 5 mm tall ink stamp on colophon, but with “mountain” spelled without “a” in line 339 on p. 41). Octavo, original black flexible cloth, lettered in gilt. In near fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco chemise and clamshell box. An exceptional example.

The Waste Land expresses with great power the disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I. In a series of fragmentary vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, it portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts, and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption. The depiction of spiritual emptiness in the secularized city--the decay of urbs aeterna (the "eternal city")--is not a simple contrast of the heroic past with the degraded present; it is rather a timeless, simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and moral evil. The poem initially met with controversy as its complex and erudite style was alternately denounced for its obscurity and praised for its modernism.