Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. First American Edition. Near fine/Very Good -. 8vo, 8 1/2 x 6 inches (215 x 152 mm). 46 pp + 1 blank. Grey cloth boards lettered in black down the spine. Orange dust jacket lettered in black by the author with his pictorial designs on front and back, price of $1.25 unclipped, tears to the spine paper repaired with acid-free paper tape. One of 2000 copies printed. On verso of title leaf:... "first American Edition Printed in the United States of America...." A title-leaf, printed on orange paper is inserted, reproducing the front and back designs of the dust jacket. Binding tight and square, edges very lightly discolored, pages clean and evenly toned.
[Gallup A34b]. The title of this book of light verse is given by Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot "Old Possum." In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, the book was the basis of the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, first produced in London's West End in 1981 and opening on Broadway the following year.
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.