The Close Chaplet
New York: Adelphi Company, n.d. [1926]. First American edition. 77 pp. Paper boards, printed label on front cover. Boards faded at extremities, corners a little rubbed, slight rubbing to spine exposing webbing. Interior clean with slight glue staining to gutter of preliminaries, bookplate on front pastedown.
Riding’s first book, first published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press preceding this American edition, from the British sheets. Bibliographer Joyce Wexler noted of Riding’s enigmatic verse, “She believed speech was the natural complement of thought; the possibility of inarticulate thought never existed for her. Her experience with words that were untrue made her loathe anything less than what she called the fidelity of word to thought, or truth. Poetry became the supreme value in her life because it offered a stable way to unite speech and thought.” Wexler A1b. Item #2285
Price: $850.00