8vo. Half-title. Original red-printed yellow cloth (some darkening to extremities); in unrestored unclipped dust jacket (a few tiny losses, some soiling). Provenance: Stephen Spender (1909-1995), English poet, novelist and essayist (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION.  Stephen Spender's work focused on social injustice and class struggle.  In 1930, T. S. Eliot published four of Spender's poems in The Criterion, and later, in his capacity as an editor at Faber and Faber, published Spender's first standalone work, Poems, in 1933. Spender recalled: "At our first luncheon [T.S. Eliot] asked me what I wanted to do. I said: 'Be a poet.' 'I can understand you wanting to write poems, but I don't quite know what you mean by "being a poet,"' he objected." Gallup A34. A FINE ASSOCIATION COPY.