Hodgson (William Hope) The Calling of the Sea

£1,200

London, Selwyn & Blount, [1920].

First edition, [one of 500 copies]. 8vo. Original boards with printed paper spine label. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.

A rather remarkable copy of Hope Hodgson’s first published verse collection, scarce in such condition and the original dust-jacket: “…most of what [Hodgson] wrote in this kind is here published for the first time. And in his poems, as in his prose, it is the mystery, the strength, the cruelty, the grimness and sadness of the sea the most potently appeal to him… For him the voices of the sea are the sighing or calling of its multitudinous dead, and there are lines in which he hints that one day he, too, will be called down to them…” A. St John Adcock’s introduction. The attraction of Davy Jones’ locker was not the author’s demise ultimately however, instead he died in action during the First World War.

In stock