MOMENTS OF VISION and Miscellaneous Verses.
London: Macmillan and Co., 1917. 4 pp undated ads. Original olive-green cloth with monogram device in gilt.
First Edition of Hardy's largest collection of verse, consisting of 159 poems. The recurrent theme, excluding the war poems, is the death of Hardy's first wife and the re-creation of their old romance. Few of these poems had appeared in periodicals, since "very rarely if ever did Hardy permit periodical publication of poems of so intimate a nature" [Purdy].
This is a near-fine copy, with scarcely any wear but with a little lifting of the front cover cloth; most of the leaves remain unopened, which is a sadly-common feature of many Hardy volumes of verse. Purdy pp 193-208. Housed in a morocco-backed slipcase (with inner stiff-cloth wraparound) -- which today would cost far more to create, than this book's value. Item #14930
Price: $125.00