Four Quartets

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943. First Edition, first impression. Fine/Near fine. 8vo, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (215 x 139 mm). vii + 39 [3]. Black cloth boards lettered in gold down the spine. White dust-jacket designed by E. McKnight Kauffer, printed in black, cream and grey; unclipped ($2.00). On verso of title-leaf: ..."first American edition | Printed in the United States of America". 4,165 printed (first impression only, of which 3,377 copies were destroyed). Small tear and chips to edges, but dj in overall fresh condition Bookseller ticket pasted inside rear board, occasional spotting on pages, pencil notation on title page.

[Gallup A43]. This is a true first-impression of the book, which is the only that bears the words "first American edition" on the verso of the title-leaf. As reported by Gallup in his bibliography of T.S. Eliot, "In the first impression, the margins of many pages were incorrect because of faulty impostition of the formes as a result of the use of unskilled war-time labour. The entire impression would have been destroyed except that it was necessary to meet the announced publication date in order to preserve copyright, and consequently 788 copies for review and other burposes were distributed before the corrected impression was ready." The rest were destroyed. The collection's first English edition would be published the following year by Faber & Faber.
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.