On This Island
New York: Random House, 1936. AUDEN'S MAJOR 1930S POETRY COLLECTION UNDER HIS PREFERRED TITLE.
The first American edition of one of W. H. Auden's defining early collections, bringing together thirty-one poems from the period in which he emerged as a leading voice of his generation. Among them are Look, stranger, at this island now, O what is that sound, Our hunting fathers told the story, and Now the leaves are falling fast.
The collection had appeared three months earlier in Britain as Look, Stranger!, a title chosen by Faber while Auden was away. Auden disliked it and asked Random House to publish the American edition as On This Island.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: ONE OF 2,000 COPIES — PRINTED BY THE SPIRAL PRESS.
Publisher's brown cloth, front board lettered in gilt with the title in script; spine gilt-lettered. No dust jacket. Octavo, 9 inches 9-68 pages.
CONDITION: VERY GOOD; WITHOUT DUST JACKET.
Brown cloth remains sound with gilt title bright on the front board. Mild overall handling and age-toning, with light rubbing at extremities and a small area of surface loss/abrasion near the upper edge of the rear board. Binding firm; interior clean and well preserved. Contemporary ownership inscription to the front free endpaper. No dust jacket.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: FROM LOOK, STRANGER! TO ON THIS ISLAND.
On This Island belongs to the concentrated period of Auden's 1930s work that established his international reputation. Its poems combine private lyricism with the political unease, social observation, landscape, and approaching European crisis characteristic of his early writing.
The American edition also has genuine textual interest beyond its change of title. A later scholarly collation of the 1936 Look, Stranger! with the 1937 On This Island identified seventeen variant readings in the American text, several of which entered later collections.
The collection also intersects with Auden's important collaboration with Benjamin Britten: Britten's first published group of songs with piano, also titled On This Island, set five poems from this collection.
SUBJECTS: W. H. Auden, British Poetry, Modernist Poetry, 1930s Poetry, Interwar Literature, Look Stranger, On This Island, Erika Mann, Benjamin Britten, Spiral Press, Random House, Poetry, Modern Poetry, English Poetry, Literary Modernism.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE: Bloomfield & Mendelson A13b.
Item #22510
Price: $45.00
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