POEMS

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd, 1911. FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 500 COPIES. 190 x 125 mm. (7 3/4 x 4 7/8"). viii, 87, [1] pp.
Publisher's black cloth, paper label on spine. In a maroon morocco-backed pull-off case. Front pastedown with small ex-libris of C. S. Currie, Ettrick, Derrinallum (see below). Spine very slightly cocked, isolated trivial thumbing, but A FINE COPY, clean, fresh, and bright internally, in an unworn binding.

This is the first collection of poetry from Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), who perhaps best personified the doomed youth of the Great War. The son of a schoolmaster at Rugby, Brooke was educated there and at Cambridge, writing poetry from his early years. According to DNB, "during his years at Cambridge, influenced by the Jacobean poets and dramatists that he studied, Brooke refined the style of his poetry. The lush extravagance learned from the decadents gave way to a harder-edged diction, metaphor which sometimes tested the boundaries of Edwardian good taste, and a penchant for syllogism. He showed a particular felicity in his use of the sonnet and rhymed octosyllabics. The subject matter of the poems is dominated by conflicts in which youth and innocence are preferred to age and experience, mind is valued above the distrusted body, and the 'eternal' is often aspired to at the expense of the transitory." This copy comes from the distinguished collection of Charles Sibbald Currie (1866-1924). He was born in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and won a scholarship to Oxford, matriculating there in 1885 before going on to become a member of the Inner Temple in London. Upon his return to Australia, he became one of the country's most notable bibliophiles, building an extensive library of first editions of all genres..