Lustra (1916)
A11
Editions
First edition, first impression (unabridged text)
LUSTRA | OF | EZRA POUND | | 200 copies privately printed, of which this is No.... [number written in by the author] | [circular stamp (designed by Edmund Dulac) in orange-red with the author’ initials in intaglio. London, Elkin Mathews]
124 pp. front. (port.) 20.6 x 14.5 cm. Tan cloth boards lettered in dark blue on front cover and up the spine; end-papers; fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Issued September 1916 at 55.; 200 copies printed. The frontispiece is a reproduction of a photograph of Ezra Pound by Alvin Langdon Coburn. It has an unprinted protective tissue. Dedication on page [5]: V[ail de]. L[encour]. Cui dono lepidum novum libellum. [Vail de Lencour was a nom de plume chosen by Ezra Pound for Brigit Patmore.]
Contents: Tenzone—The Condolence—The Garret—The Garden—Ortus— Salutation—Salutation the Second—The Spring—Albatre—Causa—Commission—A Pact—Surgit fama—Preference—Dance Figure, for the Marriage in Cana of Galilee—April—Gentildonna—The Rest—Les Millwin—Further Instructions—A Song of the Degrees—Ité—Dum capitolium scandet-—7o Kadov— The Study in Aesthetics—The Bellaires—The New Cake of Soap—Salvationists —Epitaph—Arides—The Bath Tub—Amitiés—Meditatio—To Dives—Ladies 20 CAGATHAS”; “Young Lady”; “Lesbia illa”; “Passing”)—Phyllidula—The Patterns—Coda—The Seeing Eye—Ancora—A Translation from the Provencal of En Bertrans de Born: “Dompna pois de me no’us cal”—The Coming of War: Actaeon—After Ch’u Yuan—Liu Ch’e—Fan-piece, for Her Imperial Lord— Ts’ai Chih—In a Station of the Metro—Alba—Heather—The Faun—Coitus— The Encounter—Tempora—Black Slippers: Bellotti—Society—Image from D’Orleans—Papyrus—“Ione, Dead the Long Year”—’Iwéeo@—Shop Girl— To Formianus’ Young Lady Friend, after Valerius Catullus—Tame Catr—L’Art, 1910—Simulacra—Women before a Shop—Epilogue—The Social Order—The Tea Shop—Epitaphs (“Fu I”; “Li Po”)—Our Contemporaries—Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cosmic—The Three Poets—The Gipsy—The Game of Chess. Dogmatic Statement concerning the Game of Chess—Provincia deserta—Cathay [omitting “The Seafarer” and adding “Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku,” “A Ballad of the Mulberry Road,” “Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu,” and “To-EMMEI’s ‘The Unmoving Cloud.’ By T’ao Yuan Ming”|—Near Perigord—Villanelle: The Psychological Hour—Dans un omnibus de Londres—To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers—Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus—Fish and the Shadow
Notes: The manuscript as submitted had been set in type (by William Clowes and Sons, Ltd., London) and Ezra Pound had received page-proof, when printer and publisher (apparently frightened by the suppression in the previous year of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow) refused, on grounds of the indecorum of certain poems, to continue with the book as set. It was eventually agreed that 200 copies would be printed “almost unabridged” (i.e. omitting only “The Temperaments,” “Ancient Music,” “The Lake Isle,” and “Pagani’s, November 8”). These copies, although technically not published, were in fact sold by Elkin Mathews to those who requested the unabridged text when ordering the book. For the second impression, nine additional poems were omitted and one title altered, as indicated below.
b. Second impression (abridged text).
LUSTRA | OF | EZRA POUND | | LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET | M CM XVI
115, [1] pp. front. (port.) 20.6 x 14.5 cm. Tan cloth boards lettered in blue on front cover and up the spine and stamped in blue (remainder copies—arca 1935—in blind) on back cover; end-papers; fore and bottom edges untrimmed. (Later copies have plain glassine dust-jacket.)
Published October 1916 at 5s.; about 800 copies printed. Imprint at foot of page [116]: London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited.
The contents are identical with those of the first impression except for the omission of nine poems (“Salutation the Second,” “Commission,” “The New Cake of Soap,” “Epitaph,” “Meditatio,” “Phyllidula,” “The Patterns,” “The Seeing Eye,” “Iuéogw”) and the change of title of the poem “Coitus” to “Pervigilium.”
c. First American edition, first impression (1917):
LUSTRA | of Ezra Pound | with Earlier Poems | For Private Circulation | Sixty Copies Printed. New York, October 1917. | This is Number: [number written in]
1 blank leaf, 202 pp., 2 blank leaves. front. (port.) 19.7 x 13.6 cm. Blue cloth boards with white paper label on spine printed in black; end-papers; top edges stained blue, others untrimmed. Distributed gratis beginning 19 September 1917, chiefly by John Quinn; 60 copies printed. On verso of title-leaf: ... Published October, 1917 Printed in the United States of America The frontispiece is a reproduction of the drawing of Ezra Pound by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (which was used also as the frontispiece for T. S. Eliot’s anonymous Ezra Pound His Metric and Poetry—B17—published by Alfred Knopf in January 1918). It has an unprinted protective tissue. The book is printed on laid paper watermarked: Utopian . The half-title-leaf with advertisement on verso (pp- [1-2]) was excised in most copies, leaving a stub. Dedication on page [5]: Vail de Lencour ...
Contents: Identical with the first impression of the first (English) edition, but adding after “The Tea Shop”: “Ancient Music” and “The Lake Isle”; after “Dans un omnibus de Londres”: “Pagani’s, November 8”; and at the end the following: Impressions of Frangois-Marie Arouet (de Voltaire)—The Temperaments—POEMS PUBLISHED BEFORE 1911: In Durance—Piere Vidal Old—canzont, FIRST PUBLISHED 1911: Prayer for His Lady’s Life—“Blandula, tenulla, vagula”— Erat hora—The Sea of Glass —Rome—Her Monument, the Image Cut Thereon— [Mr] Housman’s Message to Mankind—Translations from Heine [I-VIII]—Und Drang [I-XII]—RIPOSTTES, FIRST PUBLISHED 1912: [Silet]—In exitum cuiusdam— Apparuit—The Tomb at Akr Caar—Portrait d’une femme—New York—A Girl— “Phasellus ille”—An Object—Quies—The Seafarer—[Echoes, II:] The Cloak— An Immorality—“Dieu! Qu’il la fait”—Salve Pontifex (A. C. S.)—A@o.a— The Needle—Sub mare—Plunge—A Virginal—Pan Is Dead—The Picture— Of Jacopo del Sellaio—The Return—THREE CANTOS OF A POEM OF SOME LENGTH: [Cantos II, III, and I, in that order, all three differing radically from the eventual final texts.]
d. Second impression:
LUSTRA | of Ezra Pound | with Earlier Poems | New York . Alfred A. Knopf . Mcemxvii
1 blank leaf, 202 pp., 2 blank leaves. 19.7 x 13.7 cm. Yellow paper boards stamped in blue on both covers and on spine; end-papers; top edges stained blue, others roughly trimmed. Salmon dust-jacket printed in dark blue.
Published 16 October 1917 at $1.50; number of copies unknown. On verso of title-leaf: ... Published October, 1917 Printed in the United States of America 22 [Printed on wove paper watermarked: OLDE STYLE]
(40 special copies were bound for John Quinn in the style of the first impression, with its frontispiece—not included in ordinary copies. A “Note” by John Quinn on the various editions and impressions of the book, dated 24 October 1917, printed on a folder of two leaves measuring 17.8 x 12.1 cm., was laid into some of these special copies and into later copies of the first impression.)
The contents are identical with those of the first impression except for the omission of one poem, “The Temperaments.” Note: Three copies have been located of unnumbered sheets for the first impression bound in tan paper boards similar to those of the second impression. Two of these—one at Brunnenburg in 1981—contain the half-title-leaf, which was excised from most copies of the first impression. The exact status of these copies has not been determined.
Artefacts
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