Ash Wednesday: Six Poems

London: Faber & Faber, 1930. First Edition. Near fine/Good +. 8vo, 7 5/8 x 5 inches (192 x127 mm); 21 pp. Brown cloth boards stamped in gold on front cover and on spine; t.e.g., others untrimmed. Dust-jacket printed in green, black, and red, with design by Edward Balden, price clipped, spine panel fragile and split, several chips and small tears to the top edge and bottom rear corner. Bookseller ticket pasted inside front cover; small script pencil notes on rear jacket flap and some pages.
[Gallup A15b]. In 1927 T. S. Eliot converted to Anglicanism and became a British citizen, thus renouncing his American nationality. "Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem he wrote after his conversion. Published in 1930, it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. Eliot's style of writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift from the poetry he had written prior to his 1927 conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a similar vein. His style became less ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by multiple characters in dialogue. Eliot's subject matter also became more focused on his spiritual concerns and his Christian faith. (Raine, Craig. T. S. Eliot. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
From the estate of Robert Cecil Bald (1901 - 1965), an Australian scholar of English Literature, who moved to the US to teach at Cornell University in 1937 and was then a professor at the University of Chicago from 1952 to 1965.