POEMS

First edition, first printing. Original fawn cloth lettered in black and red to the spine, in dustwrapper. An unusually fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents bright and clean throughout. Light spotting to upper edge and to front and rear pastedowns. In the remarkably fresh, clean and bright dustwrapper. Not price-clipped (5s. net to the front flap). A beautiful copy.

The short text printed on the front flap notes that "The title 'Poems' usually means that the book is the first volume of poems by that author". This was certainly a pattern for poets published by Faber and Faber during the 1930s. Prince's debut 'Poems' followed those by Auden (1930), Spender (1933), MacNeice (1935) and George Barker (1935), but unlike the others, Prince didn't publish any further volumes with Faber, his next book, 'Soldiers Bathing', issued sixteen years later by The Fortune Press. During the war, Prince served in the Army Intelligence Corps, after which he joined the English department at Southampton University where he remained until 1974. His editions of Milton and Shakespeare are familiar to generations of English students, and his short book on 'The Italian Element in Milton' (1951) remains one of the essential books on the poet. T. S. Eliot was an early champion, publishing his poems in The Criterion before editing 'Poems' for Faber. Later, Prince would become a significant figure for the so-called New York School of poets, most notably John Ashbery, for whom the older poet was an enabling influence. "Like Landor", Ashbery wrote in 2002, "he [Prince] stands somewhat apart from mainstream modern poetry; like him, he is a poet to whom poets turn when they feel they cannot write, that is, he is a source of poetry. He is an artist."