THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

First UK edition, first printing. Original burgundy cloth lettered and ruled in gilt to the spine, in the Berthold Wolpe designed dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents clean throughout. Some offsetting to endpapers. In the very near fine dustwrapper, a little rubbed and nicked to spine tips, with a closed tear (c. 2 cm) and associated crease to the lower edge of the front panel. Not price-clipped (10s 6d net to the front flap). A lovely, bright copy.

'The Shield of Achilles', one of Auden's great middle-period works, is framed by two of the poet's finest sequences, the 'Bucolics' and the 'Horae Canonicae', both consisting of seven poems. Between them is a group of fourteen discrete poems including the great title poem (described by Randall Jarrell as "an impressive, carefully planned [and] entirely comfortless poem"). The first UK edition of 'The Shield of Achilles' was published on 11 November, 1955 in an edition of 4000 copies (the US edition had been issued the preceding February). In February 1956, Auden won the National Book Award for Poetry for the volume. (Bloomfield A35b).