LIKE A BULWARK: New Poems.

First UK edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper. Review copy, with the Faber review slip loosely laid in. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Offsetting to free endpapers. In the slightly dusty wrapper, rubbed and nicked to upper corners, with a small area of loss to the upper edge of the upper spine fold. Not price-clipped (10s 6d net to the front flap).

'Like a Bulwark' was the first full collection Moore published during the 1950s (her previous collection was 'Nevertheless' of 1944; the 'Collected Poems' followed in 1951), having spent the first half of the new decade on her wonderful versions of La Fontaine's 'Fables'. After the relative simplicity of the poems of 'What Are Years' (1941) and 'Nevertheless', in 'Like a Bulwark', as Donald Hall notes, "the pell-mell transitions of some of the early poetry reappear". Published 30 August 1957, 1000 copies of the Faber edition were printed. (Donald Allen, 'Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal', New York, 1970; Abbott A14b).