ABOUT THE HOUSE

First UK edition, first printing. Christopher Ricks' copy, with his name in pencil to the upper edge of the front free endpaper. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. With errata slip tipped in to the contents page. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents clean throughout. A touch faded to the spine, which is also a little rubbed and nicked to tips. In the dustwrapper, a touch faded to the spine, which is also a little rubbed and nicked to tips. Not price-clipped (15s net to the front flap). An attractive copy with a pleasing association.

With the pencilled ownership inscription of the critic and editor, Christopher Ricks ("C. B. Ricks"). Ricks (born in 1933), has editied volumes of Milton, Tennyson, and T. S. Eliot's poetry (the latter two the definitive scholarly editions), and the author of essential volumes on the same authors, in addition to those on Keats, Beckett, and Bob Dylan. He was described by Auden himself as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding", and as our "greatest living critic" by John Carey. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and formerly Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. 'About the House' opens with 'Thanksgiving for a Habitat', a sequence of twelve poems cast as a tour through the various rooms of Auden's house in Kirchstetten in Austria, each of its poem dedicated to a friend, living or dead. Highlights include the beautiful third poem, 'The Cave of Making', dedicated to the memory of Louis MacNeice and 'The Geography of the House', the sixth, for Christopher Isherwood. The book is dedicated to Edmund Wilson and his wife Elena; Wilson was an early champion of Auden's frequently misunderstood (and under-appreciated) later work. The first UK edition of 'About the House' was published on 27 January, 1966 in an edition of 4000 copies (the US edition had been issued in July, 1965). (Bloomfield A49b).