THE SKULL OF SWIFT: An Extempore Exhumation.

Indianapolis:: Bobbs-Merrill,, (1928). Hardcover first edition -. Very good in tan boards with paper label on spine (front flap only of dj laid in) . First US printing. In reviewing this book, T. S. Eliot commented "The book is very readable, confused and confusing - The exhumation is really a romantic biography; the skull is a mere figurehead. The first chapter contains a reference to a phrenologist, who after examining the skull of Swift reported, 'amativeness large and wit small'; thereafter the skull slips back into its proper place. In the next chapter we are informed that the Life of Swift will never be written; and then Mr. Leslie proceeds to write it. The biography is bright, interesting, and apparently well informed; but Mr. Leslie does not bring us any further inside that mystery of Swift which he sets himself to study." Illustrated with a frontispiece of Swift and seven internal illustrations in shades of red. Index. 347 pp.