OUT OF THE PICTURE: A Play in Two Acts.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author and inscribed to W. H. Auden. Original light brown cloth lettered in blue to the spine, in the supplied first state dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. The cloth is toned and dusty (notably to the spine) with a handful of stains to the rear panel. The dustwrapper, lightly toned to the spine, is a little dusty to the rear panel, rubbed and nicked to spine tips and corners with a closed tear (c. 2 cm) the the lower edge of the rear spine fold. Not price clipped (6s. net to the front flap). Books signed or inscribed by Auden are relatively common, those by MacNeice are harder to come by, making this volume, warmly inscribed to Auden himself, particularly pleasing.

Inscribed and dated in black ink to the front free endpaper by Louis MacNeice to W. H. Auden in the month of publication, "To Wystan / from / Louis / with all / wishes / 15. 6. 37." MacNeice and Auden first met while both were students at Oxford. By the time MacNeice arrived in 1926, Auden, already in his second year, had already gained a reputation at Oxford as a poet. Also present were Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis, but in spite of later 'Thirties Poets' and 'Auden Generation' labels, there was never a group or gang of any kind. Auden and MacNeice became and remained close friends, and it is these two poets whose writing has plainly stood the test of time and influenced later (and current) generations of poets. In the summer of 1936, the pair famously travelled to Iceland, a trip which resulted in 'Letters from Iceland', a vivid collection of poems, letters (some in verse) and essays which has never been out of print since. The Iceland volume was published by Faber and Faber (where T. S. Eliot was poetry editor) in August 1937. Two months earlier, they had issued MacNeice's 'Out of the Picture', a play in verse, published in advance of the first performance which was staged at the end of the year by the Group Theatre, with original music by Benjamin Britten. The jacket states that MacNeice had been at work on the play, his first original work for the stage, "for a considerable time, […] put[ting it] aside in order to prepare the translation of the 'Agamemnon' [also staged by the Group Theatre with music by Britten] which we published last year". Faber had earlier published MacNeice's 'Poems' (1935). In 'The Strings are False' (1965), his entertaining autobiography, MacNeice recalls that during this time he was "dreaming about bombs and the fascists, was worried over women" and "was mortifying my aesthetic sense by trying to write as Wystan did, without bothering too much with finesse (witness 'Out of the Picture')." A number of reviewers at the time and since have pointed out that the play, an elaborate romp involving a painting ('The Rising Venus') with magical powers, an artist named Portright, a quack psychiatrist with a parrot named Bill, parody church services, and more besides, is as close to Auden in tone and technique as the Irish poet ever got. The two poets remained staunch friends and mutual admirers until MacNeice's death in 1963, but saw little of each other following Auden's relocation to the US in 1939, making this inscribed copy of MacNeice's early play a valuable token of the period when the two friends, the finest poets of their generation, were at their closest. Published in June 1937, 3,040 copies of the first edition were printed. (Armitage A5a).