A selection of essays by Orage, editor of The New Age and later the New English Weekly, starting with Orage’s many-parted Art of Reading. Pencil ownership inscription from previous owner to ffep, and occasional marginal notes throughout. Light foxing, light rubbing to the boards, but all very good.

“He was, in the true sense, a man of action; and his works follow him, even if nobody thinks of them as literary works—which they were.”
  — G. K. Chesterton, Introduction.

A memoir of this well respected and slightly shadowed figure who often published his diagnoses anonymously, and cultivated action rather than style, by Philip Mairet, a colleague of Orage’s during his last years as editor of the New English Weekly. First edition; a little dark stain top and tail of the spine, and at the bottom of the front-cover, but overall a nice, clean copy.

Reminiscences and Reflections by Selver, a translator of Slavic poetry who published in the New Age for many years. With a “full-length portrayal of Ezra Pound,” who approved of Selver’s translations of the Czech poet Petr Bezruč, the first contribution of Selver’s to the New Age, and the cause of his introduction to Orage. Selver found himself among EP’s les jeunes, an evening gathering of Imagistes (H.D., Aldington, Flint), but, having missed the Imagiste memo, his own recital failed. As Selver says, “[I] came to pray and remained to scoff.”

  These twain are Shakespeare’s equal. O blessed are the meek!
  For Pound has little Latin, and Aldington less Greek.

First edition, a fine copy with an old bookseller’s label of Henry Sotheran’s to fpd. Jacket lightly worn.

“He did more to feed me than anyone else in England.”
  —EP

Orage developed the periodical as a mediator between specialised subjects & public understanding, encouraging the relationship between literary tradition and literary experimentation, publishing Shaw, Wells, Beloc & Chesterton, as well as Pound, Flint, Hulme, Mansfield, W. Lewis, and Richard Aldington. Described as “the left-wing paper” of the day by Margaret Cole, Orage, alongside his contributors, diverted from the ‘collectivist premises’ of Socialism to develop Guild Socialism, publishing C. H. Douglas and later Pound on Douglas.

First edition, with numerous illustrations including, among other charicatures, a drawing of EP by Tom Titt. Dust-jacket lightly rubbed, else very nice.

A personal portrait of EP by Bottome who first met him in pre-war London, and then again in Rapallo in 1935. An English novelist of Pound’s age, Bottome writes of Pound’s nervous energy as a youth and his critical facility which outstripped everyone elses, setting down three criticisms Pound gave her at the time which she says only grew more true. An active anti-fascist, when Bottome visited Pound in Rapallo she found him relaxed and even more appealing, with political solutions that she largely attributes to his upbringing as a single child, his isolation in Italy, and his being ‘fried’ by Mussolini.
  Together with similar essays on Alfred Adler, Max Beerbohm, Ivor Novello, Sara Delano Roosevelt, and Margaret MacDonald Bottome. First edition, lacking the jacket, with the ink ownership inscription of Rosalind Hesselberg (?) dated June 1945 to ffep. From the library of A. David Moody, with a small referential note of his laid-in to the essay on Pound.

Poems by A. O. Barnabooth, one of Valery Larbaud’s (1881-1957) pseudonyms. Pocket edition, with a new preface by Robert Mallet. Clean throughout with grubbied covers.

As TSE describes him, Harold Monro was “One of the few poets [that cared] more for poetry in general than for their own work.” Monro played a vital part in London (“DEAH OLD London, [the] place for poesy” — EP to WCW, 1909) at the time, founding & running the Poetry Bookshop which published Pound’s Des Imagistes anthology, and volumes of Imagist poetry by Aldington & Flint, passing, however, on Eliot’s Prufrock. First edition, a fine & tight copy in a v.g. d.j. with a little foxing to the flaps.

A composition of Brigit Patmore (1888-1965)’s papers, which she was encouraged to write by bookseller Betram Rota, by her son Derek Patmore (1908-1972), full even in his introduction of all the names of the age whom Derek had known as a child. Brigit Patmore, Richard Aldington, EP, and H.D. once “made a four [who] would go around together most afternoons.” After Aldington and H.D.’s divorce, Patmore lived and travelled together with Aldington. First edition, a fine copy, the spine of the jacket sunned, with the very occasional pencil note by David Moody.

A collection of Olson’s writings on EP, during Olson’s visits to Pound at St. Elizabeths from 1946 to 1948 when Olson was at the start of his career as a writer. Olson’s writing is typical of a student fighting against the rhetoric of their teacher, and a great document of what it is to evaluate Pound personally. First edition. A very good copy with the edges of the jacket folding outward slightly.

A young writer in Paris of the 1920’s, a journalist teaching at Harvard, Librarian of Congress under Roosevelt, a liberal accused of fascism by communists & of communism by Senator Joseph McCarthy, but above all a poet (who won the Pulitzer price thrice), these 400 letters, the editor’s best, make up an autobiography of this important and widely achieving man. Included are efforts by MacLeish to get EP released from St. Elizabeths, though Pound disdained MacLeish’s poetry, and MacLeish Pound’s politics. First edition, mostly fine in a slightly worn dust-jacket with one tear at the front of the spine.

Memoirs of Mary Barnard who, after graduating from Reed College, sent off six poems to EP in 1933 who kept up correspondence with Barnard for years, encouraging her to the use of ancient Greek verse forms and translation in English lyric, culminating in her 1959 publication Sappho: A New Translation which has been hailed “the best Green translation in American literature.” With further letters from W.C.W. and Marianne Moore. First edition, with a few marks in pencil by A. David Moody. A fine book; one tape repair to the jacket, sunned to spine.

JGF’s Autobiography, accounting for his days in London among Orage, Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, the Imagistes who appealed in vain for his inclusion in Des Imagistes, his success with Amy Lowell, a detailed account of the imagist dinner at the Dieudonné, 1914, where EP presented the group with a bathtub, announcing imagists nageists, after Lowell’s “In a Garden,” and on. New edition, after the 1937 first, with the added introduction; a fine copy.

Stock’s account of his entries into poetry, with two-thirds of the book given over to his relationship with Pound and work as a Poundian. A near fine copy, sunned to spine and very lightly to the edges. No. 129 of 200 copies, signed to the limitation page.

Five books by stock, all privately printed. The first 3, Twenty-Eight Poems (1994, No. 8 of 50 copies, signed to the limited page, a further gift-inscription to ffep), Fourteen More (1995, No. 6 of 30 copies, unsigned) and Numbers XLIII-LX (1996, No. 7 of 40 copies, unsigned) complete his book, Numbers. Vespers (1999, unnumbered & unsigned) is a collection of poems, starting with a sequence of the same name. The last, Deo Gratias; Poems of Penitence and Praise (2005, unnumbered, with the author’s ms. correction to p.68, wear to front cover) is, as Stock writes in the gift inscription, “not a published book but cheap laser-printed ed. to send as text to publishers and a few friends and aquaintances.”

A large part of Stock’s Toledo publications, where he was a visiting professor, and the main corpus of his poetic output after a life as scholar and editor, mainly in the Poundian vein.

Bacigalupo, a tennis champion in his youth, an accomplished doctor, and a local Rapallese describes the many (mostly) foreigners who gravitated to the coastal town, including EP as tennis champion in his own right, and James Laughlin flirting by the sea. The chapter on EP annotated in the margin by David Moody. With an exhibition leaflet, Il mondo di Giuseppe e Frieda Bacigalupo, Cultura internazionale a Rapallo 1912-1999 a cura di Massimo Bacigalupo e Carlo Vita, 7 dicembre 2012 - 11 gennaio 2013 laid in.

First French translation of Mary de Rachewiltz’s account of her childhood and life with her father. A fine copy.

A biography of Iris Barry, one of the first intellectuals to perceive and promote film as an art-form. First edition, with numerous illustrations including portraits of Barry by Wyndham Lewis, with whom she had 2 children. Near fine, the occasional pencil jot in the margin by David Moody.

A brilliant biography of “J”, who founded New Directions after Pound’s suggestion on Laughlin’s leaving the Ezuversity (Rapallo, 1934), poet, and skier; both extensive & intimate. First edition, generally fine save a little edge-wear to the jacket, with the occasional pencil score in the margin by David Moody.

For one whom EP dismissed, after a term at the Ezuversity in Rapallo around 1934-5, as hopeless poet (but hopeful publisher), this heavy volume stands testament to Laughlin’s lifelong walking “a long corridor of closed doors.” A style we might attest more to W.C.W. than EP, who encouraged Laughlin to compose later on in life. First clothbound edition. A fine copy in a lightly bumped jacket.

A biography of de Roux, writer, publisher, and editor of the EP Cahiers de L’Herne. With one chapter given over to de Roux and Pound’s first meeting in 1963. A good copy a little grubby on the extremities.

A collection of essays by Dominique de Roux, in French, on EP; with foreword by M. de R., translated to French by Philippe Mikriammos; a further essay by the editor, a calendar of the encounters between D. de R. and EP by Mikriammos, and a small amount of correspondence between D. de R. and EP and Olga Rudge. One of 300 copies “sur offset,” a further 33 were printed on vergé. Inscribed in ink to the ffep from Philippe Mikriammos to David Moody, “with best wishes for his grand oeuvre.”

A small book of poetic prose by de Roux upon two lost lives, Mao Tse-Tong & Ezra Pound, both poet statesmen; with a brief essay by de Roux on EP dated 1973, and a bibliography of the author’s works. Third edition, after a first in 1974 and a second in 1985. A very pretty printing with shining black ink.

“Shall two know the same in their knowing? Thought is a labyrinth.” Thus ends The Pound Era with two quotes, the first, of The Cantos, the second from a letter from Davenport to Kenner in 1963. These one thousand plus letters, with extensive endnotes, document the rare harmonising of two equally isolated thinkers. Together Kenner & Davenport liberated each other into publishing works composed as they had learned to from the modernists, and not as the universities then expected them. A fine set, in the original slipcase.