Sitwell, Osbert ~ England Reclaimed. A Book of Eclogues

First UK Printing : Duckworth, London: 1927

8vo, bright orange cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt; in the McKnight Kauffer illustrated dust wrapper priced 7’6 net to spine, showing a stylised figure representing a modern Green Man; THE BOOK a very good copy, edges mildly sunned; endpapers slightly browned and offset; the very good WRAPPER with some fading to spine, overall light shelf marking and dirtying; some nicks and chips to fold ends and spine tips; with a couple of small closed tears to folds. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition of this collection of ecologues, rustic and pastoral poems which formed the first part of a trilogy on the theme of England; the second volume was concerned with country towns, while the third dealt with cosmopolitan life in cities. The book is dedicated to the author’s sister, Edith. All three of the Sitwell siblings – Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell – were poets, writers, and patrons of artists who grew up in the sprawling stately home of Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire. Osbert writes of his young sister in the introduction: “To you, sad child, upon the darkened stair, Poor flaxen foundling of the upper air…” The remainder of the poems contained after all touch on an idealised England, a remembered youth, and figures within the society which the Sitwells inhabited, including such as Mr and Mrs Hague, ‘Moping Fred’, and a whole series on the ‘Southern’s’, Dust jackets by E. McKnight Kauffer are becoming increasingly collectible, especially those produced between the 1920s and 1950s. American by birth, Kauffer settled in Britain in 1914 and was primarily known for producing iconic posters for the London Underground and Shell. His abstract and symbolic, rather than figurative designs proved hugely popular with publishers, and they remain so today.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Very Good