Flowering of the Rod. Slipcased with 5451.
Inscribed To Her Husband And Editor
[Doolittle, Hilda]. H.D. Tribute To The Angels. London…: Oxford University Press, 1945.
8vo.; sewn signatures; blue, green and red printed dust-jacket glued; fine.
In a specially made cloth slipcase with:
[Doolittle, Hilda]. H.D. The Flowering of the Rod. London…: Geoffrey Cumberlege / Oxford University Press, 1946.
8vo.; sewn signatures; tan printed dust-jacket, glued; fine.
First editions of H.D.’s tenth and eleventh books, the second and third books in her poetic trilogy that started in 1944 with The Walls Do Not Fall, documenting the horror of World War II and dealing with the themes of death and regeneration from recent world terrors. Broughn A21.
Each is a presentation copy, inscribed to her husband and editor, Richard Aldington. The first is inscribed on the half-title: H.D. / to / Richard Aldington / Lausanne / Feb.27 1949. The second is inscribed on the first blank: H.D. to Richard Aldington / Lausanne / Feb.27 1949.
After World War II, H.D. was inspired to write the trilogy on the horrors of war and the Holocaust, of which Tribute To The Angels and The Flowering of the Rod are the second and third books. H.D. would continue to struggle with the themes of death, life, and human suffering in her writing until her own life came to an end in 1961, the year of her last publication, Helen in Egypt. Today, H.D. is widely considered one of the most significant poets of the modernist movement, male or female, and many contemporary scholars have examined the themes of female imagery and identification in her work, and continue to do so. She figures widely and is oft cited in two of the most important and authoritative scholarly works about the modernist literary period, Shari Benstock’s Women of the Left Bank: Paris 1900-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986) and Hugh Ford’s Published in Paris: American and British Writers, Printers, and Publishers in Paris, 1920-1939 (New York: Pushcart Press, 1975).
(#5451 / #5450)
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