The Chapbook. A Miscellany. Nos. 25 - 40.

The Poetry Bookshop, London., 1923-1925. First editions. The last sixteen issues of the this poetry-based journal. For the last two the monthly miscellany switched from a monthly to an annual appearance. Royal octavo. Issues 25 to 38 have been bound into blue cloth with leather title-labels, retaining the original wrappers. Issues 39 and 40 are in the original decorative boards. Verse contributors include (in approximate order of appearance) W.H. Davies, Charlotte Mew, Sacheverell Sitwell, Humbert Wolfe, Sergei Yesienin, A.E. Coppard, Herbert Read, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy, Anna Wickham, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Edith Sitwell, T.S. Eliot, C.P. Cavafy, Jean Cocteau, Siegfried Sassoon and many others. Prose pieces by Graves, Pound, Eliot, Hueffer, Aldington, Monro (on ''The Waste Land''), Wyndham Lewis, Osbert Sitwell, et al. Pictorial material by Picasso, Paul Nash, John Nash, Wyndham Lewis, Leon Underwood, Albert Rutherston, Blair Hughes-Stanton, David Jones, William Roberts. et al. Cover designs by Rutherston, Lovat Fraser, Ethelbert White, Paul Nash, et al. E. McKnight Kauffer designs the cover for issue 36 (''New American Poets'').Each of the four volumes has on its front pastedown Ifan Kyrle Fletcher's colour bookplate with its theatrical design by E. McKnight Kauffer. Tipped onto the rear cover of issue 35 is an Autograph Letter Signed by Kauffer on his headed writing paper and dated September 19, 1925: about 120 discussing a commission for a bookplate design and suggesting a fee of 15 guineas, or 5 guineas if the commission is not carried through to completion. Tipped onto the front free endpaper of issue 39 is an envelope addressed to Fletcher containing a similar letter, dated September 23, 1925: about 120 words in which he asks if Fletcher has any ideas as to the design of the bookplate (''P.S. If you issue catalogues, please send me one for I am greatly interested in books old and new.''). Ifan Kyrle Fletcher was a leading theatre historian and bookseller.The two clothbound volumes are very good indeed, with some rubbing to the title-labels. Issue 39 has tanned free endpapers and is rubbed and darkened at the spine where there has been some repair work; internally fine. Issue 40 is defective at the spine and tanned at the free endpapers; internally very good; remains of the dustwrapper present.