[Christopher Fry's copy of W. H. Auden's first published book, with Fry's ownership inscription dated to the year of publication.] Poems.

Author: 
W. H. Auden; Christopher Fry
Publication details: 
London: Faber & Faber, 24 Russell Square. 1930.
£650.00
SKU: 22548

In folding box, dark blue, gt. 79pp, 8vo. In plain white card wraps, in blue dustwrapper printed in black, with red border to cover. Ownership inscription in blue ink on front free endpaper: 'Christopher Fry | 1930'. Hardly the best of copies, but a good association between two of the three giants of the twentieth-century English verse play (Eliot being the other). Internally tight, on lightly-aged paper, in aged and worn wraps. The dustwrapper is in poor condition, stained, chipped, and separated into several loose parts along the folds, with spine and back cover tipped-in onto the wraps. It is interesting to consider that Fry possessed this book several years before he began his glittering career (his plays were the most commercially successful of the three, and his real success began after the Second World War). It is hard to believe that he cannot have been influenced by the style and tone of the verse play which opens the book (pp.5-34), 'Paid on both Sides | A Charade'. Auden's first published work, only preceded by 'Nine Experiments', privately-printed in 1928 by Stephen Spender. One of a thousand copies. Bloomfield and Mendelson A2a. From the Christopher Fry papers.