The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton; East Coker; The Dry Salvages; Little Gidding -
T.S. Eliot
1941 - Faber and Faber, London - First Editions
Four first editions of what Eliot himself considered to be his finest work finely bound into one volume, housed in a matching custom slipcase.
‘Four Quartets’ is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in ’The Waste Land’. First published individually from 1936 to 1942. Here, in four linked poems (’Burnt Norton’, ‘East Coker’, ‘The Dry Salvages’, and ‘Little Gidding’), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man many feel to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.
‘Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.’ – Burnt Norton
‘In my beginning is my end.’ – East Coker
‘I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown gold – sullen, untamed and intractable...’ – Dry Salvages
‘Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.’ – Little Gidding ‘Four Quartets, the most important poem since Yeats's The Tower, and, as many think, of the century, were written over ten years. Although Eliot had long taken leave of modernism as a creed, and disapproved of poetry as a substitute for religion, he had retained the modern advances in technique evolved by him and Pound and the Quartets preserve the melodic line, the intricacy of thought and shape which is the high point of his technique applied to what are really religious and philosophical meditations.’ – Cyril Connolly, The Modern Movement.
‘Although Eliot always intended the four poems to be published as one volume and to be judged as a separate work, each first appeared separately.’ – HRC, One Hundred Modern Books exhibition, no. 92D.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, and became a British subject in 1927. The acclaimed poet of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, among numerous other poems, prose, and works of drama, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. T. S. Eliot died in 1965 in London, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
References: Connolly, The Modern Movement. 100 Key Books from England, France and America, 1880-1950, 89. Murphy, Critical Companion to T.S. Eliot 2007. Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot: A Life 1972. Pinion, T.S. Eliot Companion 1986. www.poets.org. GallupA37.
Octavo (binding size 23.3x15.6cm), pp. [6] [4] 9-15 [1]; [4] 7-15 [1]; 15 [1] [4] 7-16 [4]. 'Little Gidding' printed on distinctive grey paperstock. Elegantly bound in recent full maroon morocco, single gilt filet borders to bards, gilt lettering to spine and upper board, grey endpapers, top edge trimmed, others untrimmed. With a matching cloth-covered slipcase Condition: Near fine, different paperstocks show varying degrees of minor toning and light spotting, in fine binding. Ref: 112354 Price: HK$ 8,000
‘Four Quartets’ is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in ’The Waste Land’. First published individually from 1936 to 1942. Here, in four linked poems (’Burnt Norton’, ‘East Coker’, ‘The Dry Salvages’, and ‘Little Gidding’), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man many feel to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.
‘Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.’ – Burnt Norton
‘In my beginning is my end.’ – East Coker
‘I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown gold – sullen, untamed and intractable...’ – Dry Salvages
‘Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.’ – Little Gidding ‘Four Quartets, the most important poem since Yeats's The Tower, and, as many think, of the century, were written over ten years. Although Eliot had long taken leave of modernism as a creed, and disapproved of poetry as a substitute for religion, he had retained the modern advances in technique evolved by him and Pound and the Quartets preserve the melodic line, the intricacy of thought and shape which is the high point of his technique applied to what are really religious and philosophical meditations.’ – Cyril Connolly, The Modern Movement.
‘Although Eliot always intended the four poems to be published as one volume and to be judged as a separate work, each first appeared separately.’ – HRC, One Hundred Modern Books exhibition, no. 92D.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, and became a British subject in 1927. The acclaimed poet of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, among numerous other poems, prose, and works of drama, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. T. S. Eliot died in 1965 in London, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
References: Connolly, The Modern Movement. 100 Key Books from England, France and America, 1880-1950, 89. Murphy, Critical Companion to T.S. Eliot 2007. Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot: A Life 1972. Pinion, T.S. Eliot Companion 1986. www.poets.org. GallupA37.
Octavo (binding size 23.3x15.6cm), pp. [6] [4] 9-15 [1]; [4] 7-15 [1]; 15 [1] [4] 7-16 [4]. 'Little Gidding' printed on distinctive grey paperstock. Elegantly bound in recent full maroon morocco, single gilt filet borders to bards, gilt lettering to spine and upper board, grey endpapers, top edge trimmed, others untrimmed. With a matching cloth-covered slipcase Condition: Near fine, different paperstocks show varying degrees of minor toning and light spotting, in fine binding. Ref: 112354 Price: HK$ 8,000