Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. First U.S. edition, later printing. Hardcover. This is a jacketed first edition, an early (though not first) printing of the book of poems that improbably inspired one of the biggest Broadway musicals of all time.
Condition is good in a good dust jacket. The binding is tight and unfaded with sharp corners, though with a slight forward lean and some spotting along the joints. The contents show no spotting, but are age-toned, the endpapers toned by offsetting from the pastedown glue. The sole previous ownership mark is an inked name on the upper front free endpaper recto. The copyright page does not state "first American edition" but appears otherwise identical to the first printing. The illustrated orange dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the original "$1.25" upper front flap price. The jacket is spine-toned and worn at joints and extremities, with minor loss at the spine ends, flap fold corners, and along the rear joint. The dust jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
Poet, critic, and publisher Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was best known for a “passionate formality [that] caused him, even at the start of his career, to be criticized (as he himself—just as unfairly—once criticized John Milton) for a deadening neo-classicism.” For the poet known for works like The Waste Land, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was a significant departure. “Eliot's sly humour and even whimsy, of the kind that pervades his nonsense poems Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), was appreciated more slowly. It eventually triumphed when Old Possum was adapted for the stage and set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. As the immensely popular Cats it swept through the West End and Broadway in the 1980s.” (ODNB). Item #007825
Price: $75.00