THE DYER'S HAND

First UK edition, first printing. Original turquoise cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Light spotting to endpapers, prelims, upper and fore-edges. The dustwrapper, toned with one or two spots to spine and folds, with a few nicks to spine tips and the upper edge of the rear panel, is otherwise in very good shape indeed. Not price-clipped (42s net to the front flap). A very presentable copy.

Structured around the lectures he delivered as Oxford Professor of Poetry between 1956 and 1961, 'The Dyer's Hand' is the most substantial volume of prose Auden published during his lifetime and, apart from the the lectures, contains essays on a huge variety of subjects and authors including Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Yeats, Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Dickens, and Detective fiction. There are also sections devoted to Shakespeare and Opera. The UK edition followed the US edition (published a year earlier). Published 19 April 1963 in an edition of 3000 copies. (Bloomfield and Mendelson A 45b).