1914 AND OTHER POEMS

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd, 1915. FIRST EDITION. One of 1,000 copies. 192 x 130 mm. (7 3/4 x 5 1/4"). 63, [1] pp.
Publisher's black cloth, paper label on smooth spine. With frontispiece portrait of the poet. Front pastedown with ink owner's inscription of S. J. A. Evans, 1915. ◆Spine a little faded, paper label a bit rubbed and with a chipped corner, a couple of corners gently bumped, minor browning to endleaves (from pastedown glue), occasional mild foxing, but an excellent copy, the text clean and fresh, and the binding in appealing condition.

The only significant poet of his generation to sustain an heroic and romantic notion of soldiering, Brooke (1887-1915) died of blood poisoning en route to the Dardanelles in 1915, too early to experience the wholesale slaughter of trench warfare, or the bloodbath awaiting his shipmates at Gallipolli. Published posthumously, this is Brooke's second and last book of poems, containing his epitaph for a generation decimated by the Great War: "If I should die, think only this of me / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.".