THE ENCHAFÈD FLOOD, Or The Romantic Iconography of the Sea.

First UK edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. The gilt to the upper inch of the spine is a little muted (where light has seeped under the wrapper). Offsetting to endpapers. In the lightly toned dustwrapper (the spine a little more toned), rubbed and nicked to spine tips and corners with one or two short closed tears to edges. Not price-clipped (10s. 6d. net to the front flap). A very presentable copy.

When, in 1949 W. H. Auden was chosen to deliver the annual series of Page-Barbour lectures at the University of Virginia, he responded with the lectures published two years later as 'The Enchafèd Flood'. Collectively concerned with the literary iconography and symbolism of the sea, the three lectures take as their starting point the dream of desert and sea in the fifth book of Wordsworth's Prelude, and conclude with Melville's 'Moby Dick', taking in (among others) Coleridge, Baudelaire, Dante, Tennyson along the way. "The present book [...] is much larger in scope than anything Mr. Auden has done [in criticism] before, and presents his mature conclusions on many of the central themes he has been discussing in shorter pieces for the past ten years" (Monroe K. Spears, 'Poetry', August, 1950). Published on 26 January 1951 in an edition of 3430 copies, the UK edition followed the US edition published the previous March. (Bloomfield and Mendelson A31b).