The Letters of Rupert Brooke
1968, first edition, a comprehensive collection
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Printing Details
First edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 24 × 15.5cm, xv + 709pp.
Brooke was a prolific letter writer and most of his correspondents kept his letters. These have been collected during the last thirty years by one of his oldest friends, Geoffrey Keynes. There are letters to his mother and to most of his more intimate friends, including, among many others, Frances Cornford, Gwen and Jacques Raverat, Hugh Dalton, E.J. Dent, Katharine Cox, Edward Marsh, Cathleen Nesbitt, and the editor. The letters, ranging from his Rugby School days in 1904 almost to the day of his death in April 1915, give a complete picture of his short life—his loves and his hates, his moods, hopes and despairs, his views on poetry, life and youth. They are lively and witty; sometimes affected, sometimes rather shocking; not always entirely truthful.
With the help of an introduction, footnotes and a short explanatory preface at the beginning of each year, the letters virtually tell the story of Brooke's life in his own words; and give a picture of a young man very much of his period. But the young man was a poet, with all the sensibility and awareness of the artist; often wise, sometimes very foolish with the foolishness of youth.
The scenes are Rugby, Italy, Cambridge, Grantchester, Lulworth on the Dorset coast, Germany, Canada, the South Seas, army training centers in England and the Aegean. The series of letters ends with Denis Browne's detailed account, written to Sir Edward Marsh, of Brooke's death and burial on Skyros.
Condition
This copy is in very good condition with a little tanning to the page edges, and an inoffensive previous owner's name to the ffep.
Price
£20.00
