COLLECTED POEMS

First edition, first printing. Original red cloth with gilt lettering to the spine, in dustwrapper. Frontispiece photographic portrait of the author and five further plates. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth clean and bright. Offsetting and spotting to the half title and occasional light spotting to some pages within; the contents, however, are predominantly clean and bright and without inscriptions or stamps. The uniformly toned and lightly spotted dustwrapper is nicked and rubbed to edges and extremities, notably to the upper edges, which show a few small patches of loss (most noticeably to the top of the spine). Four small tape repairs to the verso. The front flap has been neatly price-clipped. Overall, a very presentable copy.

This was the first collected edition of Douglas' poems to be issued following his untimely death in 1944, edited by two friends of the poet. The poems are printed, poignantly, in reverse chronological order, beginning with a section entitled 'The Middle East' and concluding with 'Juvenilia'. "Among the younger men... Keith Douglas stands alone. He is the only poet who has written poems comparable with the works of the better poets of the last war and likely to be read as war poems when the war is over" (Olivia Manning in 'Horizon', October 1944).