ROBERT GRAVES FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : William Heinemann, (1923). First edition : [one of 1,000 copies]. An important early collection, with Graves’s introductory note on their genesis. “The strange word, whipperginny, is that of an obsolete card game, and is used to describe the mood of this book, expressed in fifty-one ingenious poems, each instinct with an idea intended to show an increasing detachment from a ‘painful war neurosis’“ (The Graphic, 24th March 1923). Includes “A Lover since Childhood”, “Children of Darkness”, “Christmas Eve”, “The Turn of a Page”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). viii,(72)pp. Original patterned boards in a cobbled design in magenta and black; red paper labels; a touch rubbed; spine label a little sunned; edges spotted, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the rarely-seen jacket lightly tanned and with extensive repairs to spine, utilising portions of the inner flaps.

SOLD

London : William Heinemann, 1931. First edition : [one of 1,000 copies]. A collection of forty-five poems, including “Thief”, “Castle”, “Bay of Naples”, “To the Reader over my Shoulder”, “Dragons”, “The Age of Certainty”, etc. “It must also be remarked about Mr. Graves that though a modern of the moderns, and for all his exclusiveness, there is nothing freakish in his technique. The above extract, for example, might quite well have come out of Shakespeare” (Liverpool Daily Post, 4th March 1931).
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],(90),[ii]pp. Original maroon cloth, overprinted in a white cobbled design [by William Nicholson]; mauve paper labels, printed in black, on spine and upper cover; a few faint edge-spots, but a very good, crisp and sound copy, with the spare title-label tipped in at rear. With the ownership inscription of Clare Pakenham.

£50

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London : Arthur Barker, 1934. First editions of the two separately published volumes of Graves’ “I Claudius” masterpiece. “I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’ or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, am now about to write this strange history of my life ...”.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo (213 x 132mm). 494; (576)pp. Folding genealogical tables. Bound in a handsome recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; the original cloth backstrips preserved at the rear of each volume; a few internal marks and spots, but overall a very good and sound set. Higginson A42a / A43a.

SOLD

London : Cassell & Co., (1946). First edition. A collection of forty poems, printed at the Curwen Press. Includes “Dawn Bombardment”, “The Worms of History”, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, etc. – “some of them very charming; some delightfully neat and witty; and all provocative of thought” (Daily News, 27th February 1946).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [viii],40pp. Original turquoise cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a few edge-spots, but a very good and bright copy in the original turquoise dust-jacket, printed in black – just lightly rubbed and faintly sunned at spine, but also very good.

£50

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London : Cassell & Co., (1951). First edition. Twenty-nine poems, mainly new – including “Counting the Beats”, “The Death Room”, “To a Poet in Trouble”, etc., but also including four or five revisions of earlier work. “A poet of great passion and splendid imagination: and if we did not know it already we have clear proof” (Bradford Observer, 5th January 1952).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (xii),40pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered in gilt; a touch sunned, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly creased and with a tiny hint of wear, but also very good.

£40

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