CUMMINGS, E. E.
i: six nonlectures.
Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1953.
8vo, pp. [8], 114, [4]; a fine copy in the publisher’s black cloth, no dust-jacket; bookplate of D. G. Bridson (see below).
£750
US $1003 €854
If you wish to order more than one copy of this publication please make an enquiry. Add to basket Make an enquiry
First trade edition, inscribed to the BBC radio producer Douglas Geoffrey Bridson ‘Wishing Geoffrey Bridson good luck / E. E. Cummings’. There was also a signed limited edition of 350 copies.
Provenance:
The Manchester-born poet, journalist, and radio producer Douglas Geoffrey Bridson (1910–1980) was responsible for over 800 broadcasts during his career at the BBC, 1933–1969. In the mid-1960s he was known as ‘the cultural boss of the BBC’ in his role as Programme Editor for Arts, Sciences, and Documentaries. Although a poet of no small ability himself, it was his tireless and democratic promotion of modern British and American literature on the airwaves that led to correspondence and then friendship with nearly all the major literary figures of his day, many of whose works he brought to a wider audience through his radio productions.
‘Cummings had appeared alongside Bridson in Pound’s Active Anthology in 1933, and Bridson had heard uncomplimentary anecdotes about Cummings from Robert Frost, but they did not meet until later: ‘I was happily surprised to find how charming an unassuming E. E. Cummings actually was. I had heard him read at the New York Y – the YM-YWHA, to give it the full title – and had made a date with him to records a similar selection of his poems at his home in Patchin Place’’ (Bridson, Prospero and Ariel).
