Siegfried Sassoon | Morning Glory, London, 1916, first edition, inscribed by the author to John Drinkwater

Siegfried Sassoon

Morning Glory. London: Chiswick Press, 1916

FIRST EDITION, COPY NUMBER 5 OF 11 COPIES, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO JOHN DRINKWATER, small 4to, with Sassoon's pencil notes beneath four poems, original wrappers, in cloth chemise, a near-fine copy

A LEGENDARY SASSOON RARITY, Inscribed by the author to his fellow poet: "No 5, for John Drinkwater, October 1916, Siegfried Sassoon". With Sassoon's pencil notes below four of the poems detailing where and when they had appeared previously in magazines. These poems were privately published at a time when the author was beginning to turn against the war following the death of his brother Hamo in late 1915 and a year before his first openly anti-war collection The Old Huntsman. The last copy at auction (copy No. 7 inscribed to Sydney Cockerell) was in 1958 and is now in the British Library; there are three other copies located in university libraries at Cambridge, Indiana and Texas.

PROVENANCE

John Drinkwater; Henry Lewis Batterman Jr.: bookplates to front pastedown of chemise