Whether A Dove Or Seagull: Poems Townsend Warner, Sylvia; Ackland, Valentine Modern Firsts,Poetry

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. Original beige cloth, green paper label to title. Boards darkened and grubby, extremities rubbed. Top edge dusty, a scatter of spots to leading edge. Endpapers toned, a few marks, else, clean and tight. Good+ A solid copy of this important early experiment in contrast (rather than collaboration) by the two poets and lovers, which has been compared to Wordsworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads. With a printed dedication "To Robert Frost," who apparently "found their poems disturbing" (Russell & Lawrence). First published in the US in 1933 by Viking, with Chatto & Windus bringing in US sheets for its own edition of 622 copies. Comprising 109 untitled poems, 54 by Warner and 55 by Ackland, with the British edition featuring a key to the rear, identifying authorship, in an attempt to circumvent critical preoccupation with who wrote what. STW and VA observed that the collection is "both an experiment in the presentation of poetry and a protest against the frame of mind which judges a poem by looking to see who wrote it." ('Note to Reader'). It is also a collection of love poems, "which vaunts [the women's] physical love, emotional commitment and the sheer creative joy each found in the other." (O'Callaghan, 2009). Russell & Lawrence Mitchell 13b; Ruth O'Callaghan (2009) Review in Artemispoetry.