Palimpsest:-

Paris: Contact Editions,, 1926. First edition, first impression, of the first book in the Magna Graeca cycle. Boughn notes that the true first edition, as here, was printed by Maurice Darantière in Dijon. The first American edition used sheets printed in France but was issued later. This semi-autobiographical triptych of stories shifts between Rome in the first century BCE to 1920s London and Egypt. It is dedicated to H.D.'s lover, Bryher, and opens with a poem to her: "when all the others, blighted, reel and fall, your star, steelset, keeps lone and frigid trist, to freighted ships baffled in wind and blast". During this period, Bryher herself was "suicidal, struggling with her sexual and gender identities, and angry at the patriarchal system. The two women sustained each other" (Poetry Foundation). Octavo. Original pale yellowish-brown wrappers with flaps, lettered in black, edges untrimmed. Wrappers soiled and a little toned with a few nicks to lower edges, flaps splitting but holding firm, internally fresh: near-fine. Boughn A8.ai.