SEXTUS AND CYNTHIA

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Original violet card wrappers stitched with black thread. Grey endpapers. Illustrated throughout with drawings by Hammond Journeaux. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the wrappers and pages crisp and fresh, the contents clean throughout.

Issued in a limited edition of 175 numbered copies (150 of which were for sale). Signed by Derek Mahon in black ink to the limitation page at the rear, and hand-numbered no. 66. In a recent article on Mahon's engagement with Latin poetry, Ahmed Badrideen notes that "[Propertius'] appeal to modernist (Ezra Pound, principally) and contemporary poets might be explained by their 'anti-authoritarian' stance and their rejection of the Virgilian manner". Mahon's sharply etched, demotic adaptations of Propertius' elegies to Cynthia, with Hammond Journeaux's drawings, vividly honour this quality and tradition: "[...] bury me beneath trees in some quiet glade / under an unmarked heap of earth and gravel / where I won't be one more name on the public road / with casual strangers pissing on my ashes." (Ahmed Badrideen, 'Derek Mahon's Latin Adaptations: A Gathering of Alternative Voices', 'Nordic Irish Studies', Vol. 15, No. 2, 2016).