The Waste Land.

ELIOT, T.S.

$35,000.00

Item Number: 148107

New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922.

First edition, second printing of one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Octavo, original black flexible cloth, lettered in gilt. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “T.S. Eliot inscribed for John Walker 25.v.27.” One of one thousand copies, this is number 213. Contains the “mount in” misprint on page 41, line 339 lacking the “a” from “mountain.” Stated as the second edition on the limitation leaf, but is in fact the second printing from the standing type (Gallup A6b). In very good condition with light toning. Housed in a custom folding chemise and half morocco slipcase. Exceptionally rare and desirable signed and inscribed.

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.