POETIC DICTION: A Study in Meaning.

First edition, first printing. Original brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper. A near very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Light spotting to free endpapers (not to the pages), faint marginal fading/mottling to boards, softened to spine tips and corners. In the fragile dustwrapper, with loss to spine tips and corners, horizontal tear across the width of the spine panel, the folds, however, intact. Small white paint mark to the lower edge of the front panel. Not price-clipped (9s. net to the front flap). A sound, well-preserved copy. Scarce, particularly so in the dustwrapper.

Owen Barfield (1898–1997), along with C. S. Lewis, was a founding member of The Inklings, the fabled Oxford-based group which included J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. After winning a classical scholarship to Wadham College, his studies were postponed by the First World War, during which he served as a wireless officer with the Royal Engineers. He met Lewis (then an undergraduate at University College) soon after arriving at Oxford in 1919, beginning a close friendship which lasted over four decades. Barfield described Lewis as "the most unforgettable friend—part of the furniture of my existence", while for Lewis, Barfield was the "wisest and best of my unofficial teachers", a sentiment reflecting the latter's pivotal status among the group (he has been described as "the first and last Inkling"). Barfield's fairy tale, 'The Silver Trumpet', published in 1925 by the fledgeling Faber and Gywer Ltd (T. S. Eliot began working for the firm the same year) was the first work of fantasy fiction (or indeed prose fiction) published by any member of the group. The book made a deep and lasting impression on Lewis and Tolkien. After reading the story in manuscript, Lewis wrote in his diary (20 October 1923) that "nothing in its kind can be imagined better", while Tolkien later reported that the book had "scored a direct hit" with his own children. 'Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning' (1928), also published by Faber and Gwyer, and based on Barfield's BLitt thesis, is dedicated to Lewis, "To Clive Hamilton ("Opposition is true friendship")". The quotation is from Blake and refers obliquely to the many extended and fruitful disagreements between the two friends. T. S. Eliot, usually at odds with what the Inklings were doing, respected Barfield and was involved in publishing 'Poetic Diction', contributing the blurb printed to the front of the rarely seen dustwrapper. As he notes there, the book expands and deepens arguments Barfield had formulated in his 'History in English Words' (Methuen, 1926). "In Poetic Diction", Eliot continues, "[Barfield] is really using this key to unlock the inner secret of poetry. […] Th[e] metaphorical enrichment, which words undergo, is much more than a device of the human mind to amuse itself: it is a progress towards the true understanding of life. The argument, absorbing in itself, is illustrated with much curious detail, and livened by pungent criticism of other theories." Eliot clearly believed in the book, issuing a second edition thirty years later with Faber, for which Barfield added a new preface openly critical of Eliot's own work. Barfield has always been most valued by fellow writers (W. H. Auden and Saul Bellow were two later admirers). In the Introduction for the 1964 US edition of this work, the poet Howard Nemerov remarks that "Among the few poets and teachers of my acquaintance who know 'Poetic Diction', it has been valued not only as a secret book, but nearly as a sacred one". (Philip and Carol Zaleski, 'The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (New York, 2015); Walter Hooper, 'Barfield, (Arthur) Owen (1898–1997)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2006); Jeffrey Hipolito, review of 'Jewel Spears Brooker, T.S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination', 'Journal of Inklings Studies' (2022); Howard Nemerov, introduction to 'Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning' (New York, 1964).