The London Mercury
London: 1919. Wrappers. First Volume, First Number, of this monthly magazine of literature and the arts, whose contributors included Robert Frost, Katherine Mansfield, Robert Graves, Aldous Huxley, J. B. Priestley, Elizabeth Bowen, D. H. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, and Graham Greene. In this inaugural issue are poems by Thomas Hardy, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon and critical essays and reviews by W. J. Turner and John Nash, among others. Royal 8vo (257 x 174mm): xx,128pp,xxi-xxivpp. Original saffron-yellow paper wrappers lettered and decorated in black, fore- and bottom edges untrimmed. Occasional spot to fore-edge, slight soiling to cover edges, but a scarce survival, tightly bound and clean throughout. Fine-. Item #BB2480
Launched in November, 1919, and edited first by J. C. (“Jack”) Squire, then R. A. Scott-James, the London Mercury ran 234 issues, closing on the eve of the Second World War. It was "openly hostile to some features of modernism, especially free verse, maintaining an aesthetically conservative stance founded on Edwardian literary tastes and on 'Georgian' poetry. . . . In the legends of modernism, then, it is often painted as enemy territory, a fortress of reactionary philistinism. . . . But even under Squire’s reign, there was room for innovation: although he scorned T. S. Eliot and James Joyce as incoherent impostors, he consistently respected Virginia Woolf as a genuine artist, and made a point of publishing her experimental story “An Unwritten Novel,” . . . poems by Eliot’s left-wing disciple Edgell Rickword . . . and, suspending his own anti-verslibrist prejudice, Lawrence’s free-verse poems 'Snake' and 'The Triumph of the Machine'." (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books and periodicals in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).
Price: $199.00