Eliot, T.S.

8vo (192 x 130mm.), first American edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author to Virginia Woolf ("For Virginia Woolf. | from the author | T.S. Eliot), with pencil corrections to individual words on pp. [9], 16, 30, 33 and 61, original tan boards lettered in brown, original yellow dust-jacket lettered in green, morocco-backed folding box, boards slightly rubbed and darkened, skilfully repaired at head of backstrip, dust-jacket slightly darkened and frayed at top edge 

Virginia Woolf, presentation inscription; Bertram Rota, catalogue 150, 1967, item 31; Simon Nowell-Smith, book-label; Judith Adams Nowell-Smith, book-label; Bertram Rota, catalogue 300, Poetry. The Simon Nowell-Smith Collection, 2002, item 304

Gallup A4b; The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volumes 1 and 2

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An extremely important association copy of the first edition of T.S. Eliot's first collection of poems to be published in America, linking two of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. 

The collection was published a few weeks earlier in February in England by the Ovid Press under the title Ara Vus Prec. The American edition differed in two places to the English edition: "Hysteria" replaced "Ode" and "Le spectateur" was titled "Le Directeur". Several of the poems had first appeared in England in 1917 as Prufrock and other Observations.

Virginia Woolf had printed seven of the poems at her Hogarth Press in 1919. She would go on to publish The Waste Land in 1923. Her relationship with Eliot did eventually result in friendship but was strained initially due to big differences in their temperaments and lifestyles. In 1919 Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary "I amused myself by seeing how sharp, narrow and much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me." The next year she wrote that, "Eliot has sent me his poems, & hopes to maintain contact during the winter. This was the text of much discussion at Charleston." (Virginia Woolf. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volumes 1 and 2, 1915-1919; 1920-1924).

This copy was exhibited at the Bodleian Library in 1983 as part of Simon Nowell-Smith's exhibition of presentation and association copies of the great poets, Wordsworth to Robert Graves and Beyond.