Beschreibung:

BLACK SUN PRESS -- CROSBY, Harry. The Collected Poems [comprising: I. Chariot of the Sun ... Introduction by D.H. Lawrence ; II. Transit of Venus ... With a Preface by T.S. Eliot ; III. Sleeping Together ... With a Memory of the Poet by Stuart Gilbert ; IV. Torchbearer ... With Notes by Ezra Pound ]. Paris: [Roger Lescaret for] The Black Sun Press, 1931. 4 volumes, 4° (230 x 175mm). Titles and text printed in red and black. Vol.III with portrait frontispiece, vol.IV with portrait frontispiece to Pound's 'Notes'. (Some very light marginal browning, a few leaves lightly spotted or marked.) Original printed wrappers [possible first binding, the spines dated '1931' at the foot], glassine dustwrappers, original red cloth slipcase (small areas slightly darkened, spine ends lightly chipped, dustwrappers browned and torn, slipcase lightly marked). FIRST EDITION OF CROSBY'S COLLECTED POEMS , NO.24 OF 500 SETS ON NAVARRE, watermarked 'PAPETERIES LAFUMA'. Following Crosby's suicide in 1929, Caresse Crosby edited his collected poems for publication, comprising three volumes that had previously been published (volumes I-III), supplemented with unpublished work that was gathered in Torchbearer . A preface written for Chariot of the Sun by D.H. Lawrence, but omitted from the first edition, served as an introduction to the first volume of the set, and commentaries for the other volumes were commissioned from Eliot, Gilbert and Pound. The prospectus states that 50 sets will be printed on Holland Van Gelder and that 500 sets will be printed on uncut Navarre paper, a limitation that was then revised to 20 lettered copies on Japanese Vellum, 50 numbered copies on Holland Paper and 'the sheets for five hundred copies on uncut Navarre' on the colophons of the published volumes. Despite this, Harry F. Marks, the American agent for the edition, 'stated that to the best of his knowledge, the sets on Japanese vellum were never printed, and the full fifty copies on Holland [...] were probably not published' (Gallup Pound ). Gallup further notes that: 'No copy on Holland paper has been seen. At least several of the Navarre copies were numbered, in some instances with numbers between 1 and 50 theoretically reserved for the Holland sets. In the Navarre copies the paper is watermarked: PAPETERIES LAFUMA'. Since the prospectus proposes that volumes I, III, and IV on Navarre paper are to be sold separately but that volume II is 'only available included gratis in the sets', it is possible that, in the absence of sets printed on either japanese vellum or Holland Van Gelder, complete sets printed on Navarre were numbered (using numbers from an allocation that had become redundant), but that individual volumes sold individually were not. Gallup also records two variant bindings; the first dated '1931' at the foot of the spine (as here) and the second (which he describes as possibly later) with the author's name at the foot of the spine. Loosely inserted is a broadsheet, 8° prospectus for the work, printed in red and black. Minkoff A42; Published in Paris p.409; Roberts Lawrence (2001) B33 (vol.I); Gallup Eliot (1969) B18 (vol.II); Gallup Pound (1983) B25 (vol.IV). (4)