Eliot, T.S.

8vo (218 x 138mm.), first edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author to Wyndham Lewis ("Wyndham Lewis | from T.S. Eliot"), annotated by Lewis on 45 pages of the text, original green dust-jacket, preserved in grey cloth case and quarter grey morocco slipcase

Wyndham Lewis, presentation inscription; the American collector Carter Burden; Roger Rechler, his sale, Christie's New York, 11 October 2002, lot 72

Gallup A55

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

A fine association between two key modernist figures. The struggling young American poet T.S. Eliot was introduced to the artist and writer Wyndham Lewis (1884-1957), whom W.H. Auden later called "that lonely old volcano of the Right", by Ezra Pound in 1915. Lewis published some of Eliot's early poetry in the second issue of his vorticist periodical Blast. Lewis was a man of strongly held views with complex (and inconsistent) politics, who often enjoyed highly volatile friendships. At the fore-front of the avant-garde in London as an essayist and activist, he was also a portrait painter of great formal innovation: Walter Sickert famously declared him the "greatest portraitist of this or any other time". At around the same time he first met Lewis, Eliot - chiefly through the agency of Bertrand Russell - met a constellation of literary and political figures such as H.H. Asquith and many other writers, artists and philosophers associated with the Bloomsbury group. Lewis reviled the latter, and in years to come was critical of Eliot's so-called arrogance (he believed he owed his success principally to Ezra Pound). However Eliot remained a loyal supporter of Lewis, even after Pound left for Italy, and after his death declared him "one of the few men of letters in my generation whom I should call, without qualification, men of genius..." (quoted by Jeffrey Myers, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, 1980, pp.120-121). Lewis painted two now celebrated portraits of Eliot, one of which, commonly acknowledged as the highest expression of his art, was infamously rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts for exhibition in 1938.