WINTER WORDS: In Various Moods and Metre.

First edition, first printing. Original green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, with a decorative roundel featuring the author's initials stamped in gilt to the front panel, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Light spotting to the upper edge of the page block. All edges untrimmed. Some offsetting to endpapers. In the dustwrapper, darkened and with minor liquid staining to the spine (with no trace of any such staining to the book itself) and a c.4 cm tear along the upper edge of the rear spine fold. Nicked to upper spine tip and corners, otherwise in very good shape indeed. Not price-clipped (7/6 net to the front flap). Hardy's eighth and final collection of poems.

Hardy was assembling 'Winter Words', his final volume of poems, at the time of his death in January 1928. He planned to publish the book on his birthday in June, but had left a blank space for his age in the first sentence of the introductory note to the book: "So far as I am aware, I happen to be the only English poet who has brought out a new volume of his verse on his... birthday, whatever may have been the case with the ancient Greeks, for it must be remembered that poets did not die young in those days." His premonition that the volume would "probably [be] my last appearance on the literary stage" is born out by the titles of its final two poems, 'We are Getting to the End' and 'He Resolves to Say No More'. Published on 2 October 1928 in an edition of 5000 copies. (Purdy, pp. 252-62).