THE WHITE STONES

First edition, first printing. Dark green cloth-covered wrappers lettered in white to the spine and front panel, with a design of white stones framed in black to the front panel. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm, the corners and spine tips lightly rubbed, the cloth, lettering and front panel design bright and clean. There is a stain to the upper edge of the page block spreading to the inside of the front panel and half title, as well as to the inside of the rear panel and upper tips of the final pages (the lie of pages and wrapper remain unaffected). The contents are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. A very presentable copy of Prynne's great, notably scarce, third collection.

Designed and printed by G. Jackson and bound by H.J. Jackson for Tim Longville and John Riley's Grosseteste Press, 'The White Stones', Prynne's third collection, was issued in an edition of 477 hand-numbered copies in cloth-covered wrappers (this copy being no. 262) and an "unknown quantity" (according Michael Tencer) in hard covers. In addition to the trade editions, the intention was to issue 26 signed, lettered copies on tinted paper. These, however, were only bound up in the mid-1990s, 18 of the 26 copies sold (unsigned) by Prynne's fellow Cambridge poet Peter Riley via one of his occasional catalogues. In the catalogue entry at the time, Riley described 'The White Stones' [as] "the most important book of poems published in England in the 1960s. There is no doubt whatsoever about that." Peter Gizzi, in his introduction to the recent NYRB reissue of 'The White Stones' (New York, 2018), writes that "Very few books of poetry published in England in the 20th century have the aura of J.H. Prynne's 'The White Stones'". At once ecstatic, meditative and lyrical, the poems of 'The White Stones' are, as Gizzi has it, "faceted like crystal to daylight, or as Prynne would have it: 'The striations are part of the heart's / desire.'" (Tencer)