Personae (1926)
A27
Editions
a. First edition
PERSONAE | THE COLLECTED POEMS OF | EZRA POUND | Including | Ripostes | LUSTRA | HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS | H. S. MAUBERLEY | | NEW YORK | BONI & LIVERIGHT | 1926
7 leaves, 231 pp., 1 blank leaf. front. (port.), 3 plates. 23.2 x 14.5 cm. Dark blue cloth boards stamped in gold on front cover and on spine; end-papers; edges untrimmed. Brown dust-jacket printed in black.
Published 22 December 1926 at $3.50; number of copies unknown. On verso of title-leaf: ... Printed in the United States Dedications, recto of third leaf: This book is for Mary Moore of Trenton, if she wants it; page : To William Carlos Williams . . . ; page [79]: Vail de Lencour The frontispiece is a reproduction of a drawing of Ezra Pound by Henri GAUDIER-BRZESKA. The first plate, inserted after page [58], reproduces Dorothy Shakespear Pound’s design for the cover of Ripostes (1915)—A8d. The two remaining plates, placed after page 60 and page 72, respectively, are reproductions of drawings by Gaudier-Brzeska in a copy of Ripostes (at Brunnenburg in 1981). “Edition [i.e. selection] to date of all Ezra Pound’s poems except the unfinished ‘Cantos.’” (Recto of fourth leaf)
Contents: PERSONAE, OF EZRA POUND (1908, 1909, 1910): The Tree—Threnos—La Fraisne—Cino—Na Audiart—Villonaud for This Yule—A Villonaud: Ballad of the Gibbet—Mesmerism—Famam librosque cano—Praise of Ysolt—De Aegypto—For E[ugene]. MCC[artney]—In Durance—Marvoil—And Thus in Nineveh—The White Stag—Guido Invites You Thus—Night Litany—Sestina: 39 Altaforte—Piere Vidal Old—Paracelsus in excelsis—Ballad of the Goodly Fere— On His Own Face in a Glass—The Eyes—Francesca—Planh for the Young English King—Ballatteta—Prayer for His Lady’s Life—Speech for Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius—“Blandula, tenulla, vagula”—Erat hora—Rome— Her Monument, the Image Cut Thereon—Satiemus [formerly “Victorian Eclogues,” II]—Mr Housman’s Message—Translations and Adaptations from Heine [I-VII[|—The House of Splendour [formerly “Und Drang, VII” |The Flame [formerly “Und Drang, VIII”|—Horae beatae inscriptio [formerly “Und Drang, IX”|—The Altar [formerly “Und Drang, X”|~Au salon [formerly “Und Drang, XI”|—Au jardin [formerly “Und Drang, XII”|—Ripostes (1912) [omitting “Echoes, I,” “An Immorality,” “Salve Pontifex (A. C. S.),” “Effects of Music upon a Company of People, I-II,” and “The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme,” and adding “The Alchemist” from Umbra|—Lustra [contents of first impression (Aira) through “Provincia deserta,” omitting “Preference,” and adding “Ancient Music” and “The Lake Isle”|—Cathay [omitting “The Seafarer” (already included above) and adding “Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku,” “A Ballad of the Mulberry Road,” “Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu,” and “TOEM-Mei’s ‘The Unmoving Cloud’” |}—POEMS FROM BLAST (1914): Salutation the Third—Monumentum aere, etc——Come My Cantilations—Before Sleep—Post mortem conspectu [formerly “His Vision of a Certain Lady Post Mortem”|— Fratres minores—POEMS FROM LUSTRA (1915): Near Perigord—Villanelle: The Psychological Hour—Dans un omnibus de Londres—Pagani’s, November 8— To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers—Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus—Fish and the Shadow—Impressions of Frangois-Marie Arouet (de Voltaire) —[MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:] Phanopoeia [I-II]]—Langue d’Oc [“Alba,” I-IV]—Moeurs contemporaines [I-VIII]—Cantico del sole (from “Instigations” )—HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY (LIFE AND CONTACTS, 1920)—HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (1917)—Cantus planus
Notes: Boni and Liveright published a second impression of this book in February 1927. A third impression was released in January 1930, and a fourth impression in May 1932, by Horace Liveright. A fifth impression, in November 1938, and a sixth impression, circa 1944?, were published by the Liveright Publishing Corporation. All six impressions are from the same plates, and the second through the fifth are identified (as “printings”) on the verso of the title-leaf. The date—1926—remains unchanged on the title-page through the first four impressions and is removed only in the fifth and sixth impressions. 465 bound copies and 525 sets of sheets of the sixth impression were taken over by New Directions late in 1946, and the sheets, with a cancel title-leaf, were bound up in red or blue cloth boards with a new dust-jacket. (These copies are not identified as part of the sixth impression.) In 1949 New Directions published a new offset edition, with additional poems (described below). The text of the 1926 edition is used for a so-called “limited” edition of this book in combination with A Draft of XXX Cantos issued in 1980 for subscribers to a series, “The Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century,” by the Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pa. The title-page reads: Ezra Pound Personae |and| A Draft of XXX Cantos. A Limited Edition. The volume collates: 2 blank leaves, 9 40 leaves, 351 pp., t blank leaf, incl. front. (port.) It measures 23.5 x 16.5 cm., and is bound in full red leather boards stamped in gold on both covers and on spine, with red-silk end-papers, all edges gilt, and with red-silk ribbon marker.
b. New (offset) edition ([1949])
PERSONAE | THE COLLECTED POEMS OF | EZRA POUND | [device] | A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK [New York, James Laughlin]
7 leaves, 273 pp. front. (port.), 3 plates. 22.1 x 15 cm. Blue cloth boards stamped in gold on front cover and on spine; end-papers. Tan dust-jacket printed in light blue (with advertisement for “Books by Ezra Pound” on back flap, including The Translations “To be published in 1950” and “Selected Essays [sic]. To be published in 1951”).
Published in May 1949 at $3.50; 3200 copies printed. On verso of title-leaf: ... Manufactured in the United States of America New Directions Books are published by James Laughlin New York Office: 333 Sixth Avenue “For this new printing of Personae Mr. Pound has added a number of poems from magazines and early volumes which he now considers deserving of permanent collection.” (Dust-jacket)
A reprint by offset of Personae (1926), with the addition of two appendices: 1. EARLY POEMS, NOT PREVIOUSLY COLLECTED, AND NOW ADDED TO THIS COLLECTION IN 1949, INCLUDING THE POEMS OF T. E. HULME: To Whistler, American (Poerry, 1912)—Middle-Aged (Poetry, 19 12)—Abu Salammamm, a Song of Empire (Poetry, 1914)—L’Homme moyen sensuel (Litele Review, 1917)—Pierrots, from the French of Jules Laforgue (Scéne courte mais typique) (Little Review, 1917)— Donna mi prega (Make /t New, 1935)—The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme (Ajpostes, 1912)—Il. VERSE OF THE THIRTIES, FIRST PRINTED IN THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY, AND ADDED TO THIS COLLECTION IN 1949. (PROSE BY A. R. ORAGE.): Poems of Alfred Venison, the Poet of Titchfield Stree-—M. Pom-Pom (7ownsman, 1938)
Note: A second impression (3340 copies) of this offset edition—not so identified—was issued in June 1956, in a grey dust-jacket printed in dark blue, with advertisement for Section: Rock-Drill ([1956])—A70b—on back flap. Although copies of this later impression vary slightly in paper and binding from those of the first impression, the only significant difference is in the advertisements on the dust-jacket. Still later printings add an “Index of Titles and First Lines,” pp. 275-81.
c. c. First English edition ([1952])
PERSONAE | COLLECTED | SHORTER POEMS | OF | EZRA POUND | FABER AND FABER | 24 Russell Square | London
1 blank leaf, 2 leaves, 7-287 pp. 20.9 x 14 cm. Rose cloth boards stamped in gold on spine; end-papers. Yellow dust-jacket printed in black and green. 41
Published 16 May 1952 at 215.; 3000 copies printed. On verso of title-leaf: First published in memlii ... Printed in Great Britain by R. MacLehose and Company Limited The University Press Glasgow ... The contents are identical with those of early printings of the American edition save for the addition of an “Index of Titles and First Lines,” pp. 283-7.
d. Second English edition ([1968])
COLLECTED | SHORTER POEMS | by | EZRA POUND | FABER AND FABER | 24 Russell Square | London
7 leaves, 17-297 pp. 20.7 x 13.75 cm. Purple cloth boards lettered in gold on spine; end-papers. Blue dust-jacket printed in black and red.
Published 1 July 1968 at 305.; 6950 copies printed. On verso of utle-leaf: First published in mcmlii ... Second edition memlxviii Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone (Printers) Ltd. London, N. W. 10 ... This is a slightly enlarged edition of the volume previously entitled Personae. This new edition adds a selection of “Poems from the Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954),” “An Immorality,” “The Rapture,” “Reflection and Advice” [ie. “Pax Saturni”], “Our Respectful Homages to M. Laurent Tailhade,” and “Epilogue, to my five books containing medieval studies, experiments and translations,” and omits “M. Pom-Pom,” and “Our Contemporaries” (although both continue to be listed, erroneously, in the index).
Content is now editable.