– 25 – A u g u s t 2 0 2 2 “One Of The Most Famous 20thCentury Books Of All… A Must” 27. ELIOT, T.S. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. London, 1939. Octavo, original yellow cloth, dust jacket. $4500. First edition of one of T.S. Eliot’s most popular books, one of only 3005 copies printed, in the original dust jacket designed and drawn by Eliot. It was fellow poet Ezra Pound who first gave the nickname “Old Possum” to Eliot. Eliot sometimes used it among his friends and occasionally signed letters to them with the initials “T.P.” (Tom Possum). “A classic from the day it was printed and today-partly because of the irrepressible musical, Cats—one of the most famous 20th-century books of all. This one is a must” (Joseph Connolly). The work was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber into the musical Cats, which opened in the West End on May 11, 1981. Cloth with mild toning to spine, dust jacket with a bit of toning, faint staining to front panel, expert restoration to spine head. A very attractive copy. “So We Beat On, Boats Against The Current, Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past” 28. FITZGERALD, F. Scott. TheGreat Gatsby. NewYork, 1925. Octavo, original green cloth, custom clamshell box. $11,000. First edition of this landmark of 20th-century fiction, Fitzgerald’s haunting tale of “empty elegance and impossible love” in the Jazz Age (Julie Bosman) and one of America’s greatest novels. Noted critic Cyril Connolly called Gatsby one of the half dozen best American novels: “[Gatsby] remains a prose poem of delight and sadness which has by now introduced two generations to the romance of America, as Huckleberry Finn and Leaves of Grass introduced those before it” (The Modern Movement, 48). First printing, with “sick in tired” on page 205 and all other first-issue points. Without extremely rare dust jacket. Contemporary ink gift inscription. Owner blindstamp. Interior clean, a few minuscule rubs, gently toned spine leaning slightly. A near-fine copy.
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