A1 OVER THE BRAZIER 1916
a. First edition:
OVER THE BRAZIER | BY | ROBERT GRAVES | LONDON | THE POETRY BOOKSHOP | 35 DEVONSHIRE ST., THEOBALDS ROAD., W.C. | 1916
Collation: [1]42-44, 16 1eaves.
p.[1] title-page; p.[2] blank; p.[3] CONTENTS; p.[4] THE POET IN THE NURSERY; pp.[5] 6–17 [18] 19–32 text.
20.4 × 15.0 cm. Bulk: 0.5 cm. White wove paper; top edges unopened; fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Bound in drab paper covers; front cover: OVER THE BRAZIER | [cut in black with blue background and soldiers around a red brazier] | BY | ROBERT GRAVES | THE POETRY BOOKSHOP 8D NET; inside front and back covers: publisher’s advertisements; back cover blank.
Price: 8d. Number of copies unknown. Published 1 May 1916.
Contents: The Poet in the Nursery - [Charterhouse:] – Star-Talk – The Dying Knight and the Fauns – Willaree – The Face of the Heavens – Jolly Yellow Moon – Youth and Folly – Ghost Music – Free Verse – In the Wilderness – Oh, and Oh! – Cherry Time – [La Bassée:] – On Finding Myself a Soldier – The Shadow of Death – A Renascence – The Morning before the Battle – Limbo – The Trenches – The First Funeral – The Adventure – I Hate the Moon – Big Words – The Dead Fox Hunter – It’s a Queer Time – 1915 – Over the Brazier
Notes: The design of Menin Gate on the cover is by Claud Lovat Fraser and is partially hand-coloured.
I have examined a copy of A1a which is stamped on the title-page with a purple ink stamp: [all within two concentric circles:] – PRESENTATION COPY –
Impressions: 2nd, 1917. The second impression of A1a is identical to the first except the words “SECOND IMPRESSION” are printed in black at the top right of the front cover. I have seen a copy of the second impression in covers printed in black, without the usual colouration by hand in blue and red.
A photographic facsimile of the British Library copy, including black and white facsimile of inside and outside of the front and back covers, was issued in 1975 by the St. James Press in London and the St. Martin’s Press in New York as part of their Poetry Reprint Series. There is a preliminary series title-page and the book is bound in dark blue simulated cloth.
Folcroft Press also issued a photocopy publication of A1a in 1977 and 1978.
A colour facsimile printing in paper covers of A1a was issued by the State University of New York at Buffalo in an edition of 200 copies on 23 June 2000. Also published by the University at the same time and quantity in paper covers is OVER THE BRAZIER: THE MANUSCRIPTS, being colour reproductions of Graves’s manuscripts and typescripts of the poems published in A1a.
Christie’s Sale 4074 (London), of 1 November 2006 offered Lady Ottoline Morrell’s copy of the second impression with her ownership initials on title-page, dated 'Aug: 1916.' Both Higginson and Higginson & Williams date the second impression to 1917, and the 1917 date is indicated on p.[2] of A1b, but the date written by Ottoline Morrell seems to suggest, that the second impression was issued within four months of first publication.
Reference: Woolmer/PBS
Alb. Second edition ([1920]):
OVER THE BRAZIER | BY ROBERT GRAVES LONDON – THE POETRY BOOKSHOP, 35 DEVONSHIRE | ST., THEOBALDS RD. W.C. 1
Collation: [1]–[2]8, 16 1eaves.
p.[1] title-page; p.[2] list of books by Graves and edition notice; p.[3] FOREWORD TO NEW EDITION; p.4 THE POET IN THE NURSERY; p.[5] PART I. – Poems Mostly Written at Charterhouse – 1910–1914; pp.6–18 text; p.[19] PART II. – Poems Written Before La Bassée – 1915; p.[20] blank; pp.21-30 [31] 32 text.
21.4 × 13.8 cm. Bulk: 0.3/0.6 cm. White wove paper; all edges trimmed. White laid endpapers watermarked: [in double rule rectangular box enclosing also clubs and balls;] Gold [and] J. R. Lockwood & Co. Bound in grey boards with narrow medium-blue cloth spine; back and spine blank; front, in blue: OVER THE BRAZIER | BY ROBERT GRAVES | [cut as cover of A1a, but blue only] | THE POETRY BOOKSHOP
Price: 3s. Number of copies: 1,000. Published in May 1920 in light blue dust-jacket printed in blue; front of jacket: OVER THE BRAZIER | BY ROBERT GRAVES | [cut as in A1a but not coloured as there] | THE POETRY BOOKSHOP; spine of jacket, from botton to top, facing front: OVER THE BRAZIER; flaps and back panel blank.
Contents: As A1a, but omitting ‘On Finding Myself a Soldier’ and ‘A Renascence’.
Note: I have examined a copy in which the image on front cover has red color added to the ‘brazier’, bottom left. Typically, this image is present in blue only.