BROKEN HIERARCHIES: Poems 1952-2012.

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper, the front panel of which shows Oskar Kokoschka's painting, 'Loreley'. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents, except for a discreet gift inscription in ink to the front free endpaper, are clean throughout. The upper outer corners (0.5 cm at its deepest) of ten leaves within (pp. 549-69) are a little creased. In the unclipped dustwrapper, with a very light crease to the upper spine tip and one or two light surface marks, otherwise fine. A bright, sharp copy. Unusually scarce in the first printing.

'Broken Hierarchies', weighing in at 973 pages, collects no fewer than twenty-one books, from 'For the Unfallen' (1959) through to 'Ludo' (2011), the latter being one of four 'books' published for the first time here. Three further volumes have been revised and expanded for the collection. Overseen by the poet, the volume is edited by Kenneth Haynes, Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics at Brown University, who had previously edited Hill's 'Collected Critical Writings' (2008). "The scale and consistency of this volume, meticulously edited [...] and handsomely [...] set out, [...] give it a monumental air. Yet the content is increasingly turbulent. Here are all the classic poems [...], as lasting as flint-built churches. At the vital, latter end of the book there are huge achievements and intricate exercises, experimental in their rigour. Hill's scraggy apple tree is indeed an emblem of his stupendous late-spring flowering." (John Kerrigan in the 'TLS', August 8, 2014).