B12 THE BEST POEMS OF 1926 1927

The | BEST POEMS | of 1926 | [publisher’s emblem] | Selected by | THOMAS MOULT | & decorated by | JOHN AUSTEN | Jonathan Cape, Ltd., Thirty Bedford Square | 1927

Collation: [A]8 B–H8 [I]4 , 68 leaves.

p.[i] THE BEST POEMS OF 1926 | [cut of cloud, moon, stars, dale with trees and house]; p.[ii] cut of village in valley with two trees in foreground]; p.[iii] title-page; p.[iv] printer’s notices; p.[v] To | THE MEMORY | of | CHARLES MONTAGU DOUGHTY | EVA GORE-BOOTH | ISRAEL ZANGWILL | Poets | [design of rose with three large leaves]; p.[vi] blank; pp.vii–xi Contents; p.[xii] stylized urban skyline; pp.xiii–xiv INTRODUCTION; pp.1–120 text; pp.[121] blank; p.[122] printer’s notice.

18.6 × 12.6 cm. Bulk: 1.1/1.5 cm. White laid paper; top edges only trimmed; fore-edges unopened. White laid endpapers; inner sides printed with four masks, one at each corner, and piping child in centre; first and fourth sides blank. Bound in boards covered in pinkish brick-red paper printed with tree and flower modernistic design; spine has white label at top: The | BEST | POEMS | of | 1926

Price: 6s. Number of copies undisclosed. Published in January 1927 in cream dust-jacket printed in blue and black.

Notes: Graves’s contribution is ‘Four Children’ (p.1).

An American issue using the English sheets was published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1927.

A photographic reproduction of this book was issued in 1979 by Granger Book Co., Inc, Great Neck, New York, in their Grainger Poetry Library series.