(no subject)
Was tempted to buy another Graves book today. For $3000 US.
It's one of the very few genuine original proofs of his 1929 first edition of "Good-bye to All That" which was subject to legal threats by Siegfried Sassoon, and which ended the friendship between Sassoon and Graves. The book was pulled and censored, and re-issued with blank pages in place of the censored passages.
You can buy the censored version for $100 or so depending on condition, but the cheapest I found the preview version for was $800, and that for a copy in poor condition.
Anyway, instead I bought a 1995 re-print of the 1929 version - the first time it's been re-issued, apparently. Again, out of print, second-hand, from Amazon. It's kind of the middle ground, because in the 1950s Graves re-wrote "Good-bye to All That" and it's this 1950s re-write which is what basically all modern versions of the book are. I hadn't realised how much he re-wrote it, but it seems in the 1920s he was writing it raw and visceral, while in the 1950s he was writing with one eye on his legacy, so he sanitised it a lot. So I really want to read the original 1929 version. It still doesn't tell the full story, since even the 1929 version was censored due to Sassoon, but it's as close as I'm ever likely to get to it, since I can't really justify $3000 on a book, even as an investment!
The $3000 copy came with all sorts of original letters, inserts etc including one hand-written by Graves and marginalia written by Sassoon - the famous marginalia that Sassoon and fellow Great War poet Edmund Blunden wrote because they were outraged by Graves' book. A true historical piece and, I suspect, worth the money as an investment. But three grand for a book, srsly??
Anyway. That's about $150 spent on Graves books in two days. That should keep me going for a while.
It's one of the very few genuine original proofs of his 1929 first edition of "Good-bye to All That" which was subject to legal threats by Siegfried Sassoon, and which ended the friendship between Sassoon and Graves. The book was pulled and censored, and re-issued with blank pages in place of the censored passages.
You can buy the censored version for $100 or so depending on condition, but the cheapest I found the preview version for was $800, and that for a copy in poor condition.
Anyway, instead I bought a 1995 re-print of the 1929 version - the first time it's been re-issued, apparently. Again, out of print, second-hand, from Amazon. It's kind of the middle ground, because in the 1950s Graves re-wrote "Good-bye to All That" and it's this 1950s re-write which is what basically all modern versions of the book are. I hadn't realised how much he re-wrote it, but it seems in the 1920s he was writing it raw and visceral, while in the 1950s he was writing with one eye on his legacy, so he sanitised it a lot. So I really want to read the original 1929 version. It still doesn't tell the full story, since even the 1929 version was censored due to Sassoon, but it's as close as I'm ever likely to get to it, since I can't really justify $3000 on a book, even as an investment!
The $3000 copy came with all sorts of original letters, inserts etc including one hand-written by Graves and marginalia written by Sassoon - the famous marginalia that Sassoon and fellow Great War poet Edmund Blunden wrote because they were outraged by Graves' book. A true historical piece and, I suspect, worth the money as an investment. But three grand for a book, srsly??
Anyway. That's about $150 spent on Graves books in two days. That should keep me going for a while.