The Waste Land | 1922, First edition, first issue, one of the first 500 copies, complete with the rare printed and glassine dust jackets

ELIOT, T.S. (1888–1965). The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922.

First edition, true first issue, one of the first 500 copies printed, retaining both the exceedingly scarce printed dust jacket and the original glassine wrapper.

Octavo. Original black flexible cloth, lettered in gilt to spine and upper cover, untrimmed edges. Housed in the original printed dust jacket and the exceptionally rare original glassine dust jacket. pp. 64.

A particularly attractive copy. The printed dust jacket remains in near fine condition, with only minor restoration to the verso, light browning to the spine and very slight loss at the head and foot. The glassine jacket survives in remarkable fine condition, a rarity in itself. Internally fresh and clean.

This copy exhibits all of the accepted points of the true first issue: numbered within the first 500 copies issued (this copy numbered 261), bound in the correct flexible boards, and with the colophon numbers measuring approximately 5mm in height. Additionally, the text is in the earliest state, with the missing "a" in "mountain" on page 41.

Few books can claim to have altered the course of twentieth-century literature as profoundly as The Waste Land. Published in the aftermath of the First World War, Eliot's fractured, allusive masterpiece captured the dislocation and uncertainty of the modern age and became the defining poem of literary Modernism. Ezra Pound's editorial intervention, which famously reduced the poem to its final concentrated form, is now regarded as one of the great collaborations in literary history.

True first issues of The Waste Land are increasingly difficult to obtain in collectible condition. Examples retaining the printed dust jacket are uncommon. Copies preserving both the printed jacket and the fragile original glassine wrapper are genuinely scarce and represent one of the most desirable states in which the book can be found.

A superb survival of one of the landmarks of twentieth-century literature.