POUND, Ezra (1885-1972) - photo 1
POUND, Ezra (1885-1972) - photo 2
POUND, Ezra (1885-1972) - photo 3

POUND, Ezra (1885-1972)

Lot 128
09.07.2025 10:30UTC +01:00
Classic
Sold
£ 32 760
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1450570
Lot 128 | POUND, Ezra (1885-1972)
Estimate value
£ 10 000 – 15 000
POUND, Ezra (1885-1972)
Personae. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909.
An important copy of the first edition, heavily annotated with corrections by Pound.

‘Personae can be considered Pound's first "real" book of poems: It was a significant printing (1,000 sets of sheets) by a reputable publisher, and it attracted the interest of reviewers in prominent British literary journals. These reviewers agreed that, despite a tendency to affectation, the volume announced an original poetic talent notable for its "passion" and "vigorous individuality"’ (The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia).

The revisions in the present volume constitute a significant addition to our understanding of Pound’s early verse. The Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound (1976), edited by Michael King, records certain revisions found in the poet’s papers at Yale’s Pound Archive, yet the annotations in this volume appear to reveal even more changes than those which have hitherto been available to scholars. They are similar in nature to those found in the annotated first edition of his next published book, Exultations (1909), which sold in October 2002 at Christie’s New York ($33,460 including buyer’s premium). Pound makes sweeping edits that fundamentally alter the volume’s length and structure, while also suggesting minute changes to spacing, punctuation, and word choice within the poems themselves that seem to address the ‘tendency to affectation’ for which he was criticised. His revisions include omitting the epigram and seven poems entirely, modifying the 3pp. of notes at the end of the volume, and thoroughly reworking several poems, most notably ‘An Idyl for Glaucus’, ‘In Durance’, and ‘Guillaume de Lorris Belated’. In total, Pound provides approximately 225 words and several hundred other marks – underlining, crossings out, ticks, arrows, punctuation – which show the master editor behind T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at work editing his own early productions.

Of the 1000 sets of sheets printed of the first edition, ‘an undetermined number—not more than 500—were issued as part of Personae & Exultations (1913)’. This copy appears to be a mixed issue, presenting Gallup’s first issue points (drab boards and the [detached] spine title measuring c.20mm in height), but including the 2pp. ‘Exultations’ advertisement leaf printed in October 1909. The volume was for many years in the collection of the late Professor Ghan Shyam Singh (1929-2009), a distinguished poet, critic, and literary academic, and close friend of Ezra Pound. Singh, who was celebrated for his translations of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale and was literary executor to critic F. R. Leavis, recalls his interactions with the poet in a 1972 essay on ‘Meeting Ezra Pound’ for the journal Books Abroad. Singh's academic journey took him from studying English in India to teaching Italian at Queen's University, Belfast, where he became a professor. He published Ezra Pound as Critic with Palgrave Macmillan in 1994.

Gallup A3a; J. King, Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound (1976); C. G. Petter, ‘Pound's "Personae": From Manuscript to Print’, Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 35 (1982), pp. 111-132; G. Singh, ‘Meeting Ezra Pound’, Books Abroad, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer, 1972), pp. 403-409; The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia, edited by Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen J. Adams, Bloomsbury: 2005.

Octavo (173 x 110mm). Woodcut publisher's device in red on title. Original drab boards, lettered in gilt on the upper board and spine (upper portion of spine detached, the lower lacking, faint rubbing at extremities, slight splitting to textblock at pp.32-33). Provenance: Ezra Pound (inscribed ‘Ezra Pound corrected copy’ on front endpaper and bearing his annotations throughout) – Olga Rudge (1895-1996; inscribed on front endpaper ‘O. R her copy’) – Professor Ghan Shyam Singh (1929-2009) – thence by descent.
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