KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. BRADLEY

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original blue cloth lettered and ruled in gilt on black to the spine, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, with a little light rubbing to the extremities. The contents, with a previous owners name on the front endpaper and a small mark to the fore-edge of the closed text block, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the lightly toned, rubbed and creased dustwrapper, that has a small nick to the rear flap fold. Not price-clipped (30s net to the front flap).

Eliot completed his study of Francis Herbert Bradley (its original title was 'Experience and the Objects of Knowledge in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley') "in partial fulfilment of the requirements" for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Harvard University. Thanks to the award of a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship, Eliot was able to travel to England to work under Harold Joachim, a disciple of Bradley at Merton College. When the dissertation was completed, in April 1916, he was working as a junior master at Highgate Junior School and, as things turned out, never returned to Harvard to complete the doctorate, living in England from this time until his death in 1965, a year after this volume was published. It was the interest and persistence of two scholars that eventually convinced the poet to allow the thesis to be published for the first time: Hugh Kenner, who referred to it, and to Eliot's debt to Bradley, in his 1960 study 'The Invisible Poet' (Eliot famously quotes the philosopher in the notes to 'The Waste Land') and Professor Anne Bolgan of the University of Alaska, who read it in the Harvard archives and, at the same time, found a copy of a letter from Professor J. H. Woods, written to Eliot shortly after the dissertation had been submitted, in which he reported that Josiah Royce, the distinguished American Pragmatist, had spoken of the young Eliot's study as "the work of an expert". For this edition, the thesis has been provided with notes and a bibliography by Professor Bolgan, in addition to two articles Eliot published while writing it. The volume is dedicated to Eliot's wife, Valerie, "who urged me to publish this essay". Published 31 January 1964 in an edition of 5040 copies, it was the last book to be published during Eliot's lifetime. (Gallup A75b).