"LAST NIGHT I DREAMED ABOUT A HAUNTED HOUSE": ROBERT GRAVES' MOCK BEGGAR HALL, 1924 FIRST EDITION PRINTED AT THE HOGARTH PRESS

GRAVES, Robert. Mock Beggar Hall. London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1924. Quarto, original pictorial boards, uncut. $950.

First edition of this collection, finely printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, in original pictorial boards with cover design by William Nicholson.

"The whole tone of the book is philosophical involving a series of meditations on relativity and Time" (Quinn ed., New Perspectives on Robert Graves, 75). "Mock Beggar Hall contains two notable poems, 'Knowledge of God' and 'Full Moon'… Both are of strong biographical interest, since the anticipate the startling events which were soon to change the course of Graves' life. 'Knowledge of God' offers a weary image of time as a treadmill; it corresponds with Graves' account in Goodbye to All That of himself in the Islip years as 'getting through things somehow, anyhow, in the hope that they would mend.' Graves would retain this idea of time's inexorability until Laura Riding arrived in 1926… Graves' loyalty to Nancy had not lessened, but, in the last verse of 'Full Moon,' a moon of icy sovereignty, he acknowledged the death of hope for his marriage" (Seymour, Robert Graves: Life on the Edge, 117-18). Later, Graves distanced himself from this book, and tried to suppress it (Seymour). According to Woolmer, "number of copies not known but the Sussex ledger shows 299 copies sold by 18 January 1926." Higginson & Williams A10. Woolmer 46.

Very faint foxing to first few and last few leaves, a couple of very minor rubs to rear board, otherwise an exceptional, about-fine copy.