5 and, because of the worries and fatigue which preoccupied Eliot, organized and collected the material which is contained within the volume… It was not easy to find a publisher… Pound took the typescript to Harriet Shaw Weaver of the Egoist. He told her, in confidence, that he would raise the money for the printing of the book if she would allow him to use her imprint. She agreed (in fact, the money came largely from Dorothy Pound, although Eliot was not to know this)” (Ackroyd, 79). “His first important publication, and the first masterpiece of ‘modernism’ in English, was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ Nothing like the first three lines of ‘Prufrock’ had previously appeared in English poetry” (Britannica). Gallup A1. The owner of this volume, William Shelton Gray, Jr., first met Eliot at Harvard University in the late 1940s “when he came there as a guest lecturer. While he stayed at my dormitory, Eliot House, he asked me to call on him the next time I was in London.” Some years later, while working on his Ph.D. dissertation on Eliot, Gray took up on Eliot’s offer and contacted him. “I got to know Mr. Eliot rather well, mostly in his office at Faber and Faber on Russell Square in London. When I knew him it was late in his life... When I was writing my dissertation he was very helpful and read over parts of it and commented on it. Mr. Eliot never ever under any circumstances discussed his own works directly, but he would discuss openly the works of others... The last time I saw him he was in his office. I asked him whether he considered himself to be an American or English poet, to which he answered, American” (The William Shelton Gray, Jr. Library, Part II, audio recording). It was apparently at his last meeting with Eliot, in May of 1964, that Gray presented several volumes for Eliot to sign, including a first edition of Prufrock and Other Observations, which Gray had purchased earlier that day. Eliot died in early January 1965. Overall in excellent condition for such a fragile book: front hinge tender, early professional reattachment to secure the spine, a few spots of soiling to wrappers.
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