“WE SHOULD READ IT EVERY APRIL”: BEAUTIFUL LIMITED BODONI EDITION OF THE WASTE LAND, ONE OF ONLY 300 COPIES SIGNED BY ELIOT

ELIOT, T.S. The Waste Land. London: Faber & Faber, (1961). Quarto, original half vellum, top edge gilt, uncut, original slipcase. $5500.

Limited edition, number 137 of 300 copies signed by Eliot, beautifully printed by Giovanni Mardersteig at the Officina Bodoni in Verona, in publisher’s marbled slipcase.

Perhaps the greatest and most important poetic work of the 20th century, Eliot's Waste Land "came as a profound shock… Within less than a decade, The Waste Land had attained a kind of eminence from which it has never been dislodged" (Ackroyd, 127-28). "Of The Waste Land I shall say nothing but that we should read it every April. It is the breviary of post-war disillusion… Eliot's Waste Land is I think the justification of the modern experiment since 1900" (Ezra Pound). The 1922 first edition of The Waste Land consisted of only 1000 copies. The Bodoni edition of 1961 is renowned for the excellence of its format: "Officina Bodoni books have a value far above their success as examples of fine printing: they are… designed to be read" (Cave, 177).

A fine signed copy.