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Auden, W. H.
Autograph Letter Signed [with] Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 [Signed] : New York is a “grim place”.
Publisher: Faber and Faber, London;
Date of Publication: 1972
Stock Code: 10849
SIGNED paperback reprint with accompanying signed manuscript letter. Softcover octavo, pp. 351, [1]. Publishers’ striped card wraps with black titles. Letter on single sheet of paper, inscribed in blue ink, and loosely inserted. Addressed to “Dear Mr Ferres” Auden is writing to Peter Ferres, then a producer at BBC Newcastle. Full of nostalgia for a long-lost English idyll, Auden refers to his relatively rural upbringing in leafy Solihull, which was then a village surrounded by fields. Preferring “the Pennines to Birmingham” he contrasts his rural childhood with his glimpses of the post-war industrial landscape travelling by train as a young man between Birmingham and Wolverhampton “I did, as a child, have a sacred landscape” and compares his knowledge of city living in Birmingham with his current dwelling New York, which he refers to as “a grim place”. A charming, and very English, reminiscence. Spine of the book and upper cover creased; contents clean, with the Author’s name scored through to title page and signature of Auden below. The letter has been folded into quarters and is lightly creased with small hole upper left corner (where staple has been removed?).

£950.00