THE AGE OF ANXIETY. A Baroque Eclogue.

First UK edition, first printing. Publisher's original yellow cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, with a little bump to the spine tail and light spotting to the fore-edge of the upper board. The contents, with a small previous owners name and booksellers label to the front pastedown, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the lightly creased and nicked price-clipped dustwrapper, that is toned to the spine with some spotting to the underside, and otherwise without loss or tears.

Auden's 'Baroque Eclogue', the last of an extraordinary series of long poems composed during the 1940s, won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Leonard Bernstein, who based his second symphony on the poem, described it as "one of the most shattering examples of pure virtuosity in the history of English poetry". 3000 copies of the first UK edition were printed. The US edition had been published the previous year. (Bloomfield & Mendelson A29b).