“AS I WAS, OR MIGHT HAVE BEEN”: FIRST EDITION OF THE MAP OF LOVE, SIGNED AND TWICE INSCRIBED BY DYLAN THOMAS

THOMAS, Dylan. The Map of Love. Verse and Prose. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, (1939). Octavo, original purple cloth, original dust jacket; housed in a custom slipcase. $8800.

First edition in book form, twice inscribed by Thomas, once beneath the frontispiece portrait by Augustus John: “As I was, or might have been, to Norman Unger from [line pointing at name beneath portrait],” and a second time on the front free endpaper: “ Norman Unger. Dylan Thomas 1950.”

Among the works included in this collection of poems and lyrical prose, which had all appeared in periodicals and which here make up Thomas's third book, are "When all my Five and Country Senses see," "After the Funeral," "Not from this Anger," and "The Mouse and the Woman." First issue, in fine-grained purple cloth with "Dent" blind-stamped on spine. Maud, 5. Norman Unger, the inscribee of this copy, was one of the great collectors of modern first editions in the mid-20th century; Thomas inscribed a copy of his Twenty-Five Poems "To Norman Unger, my only collector."

Minor soiling to spine of price-clipped dust jacket, otherwise fine. A wonderful inscribed copy.