THE DYER'S HAND

First UK edition, first printing. Original green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. The dustwrapper, a little toned and with a small nick to the spine, is otherwise clean and sharp. Not price-clipped (42s net to the front flap). A lovely copy.

Structured around the lectures Auden delivered at Oxford as Professor of Poetry between 1956 and 1961, 'The Dyer's Hand' is the most substantial volume of prose the author published during his lifetime and, apart from the the lectures, contains essays on a huge variety of subjects 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).