ELIOT, T[homas] S[tearns]

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1939. Item #06538

First Edition of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot

ELIOT, T[homas] S[tearns]. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. London: Faber and Faber, [1939].

First edition, first printing with the words "First Published in September 1939" printed on the copyright page.

Square octavo (8 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches; 216 x 160 mm.). [2, blank], [3-6], 7-45, [3, blank] pp.

Publisher's yellow cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in red, spine lettered in red. Small neat signature on top of front free endpaper. Original price-clipped yellow pictorial dust jacket printed in black, minimal discoloration to spine.

A fine copy in a near fine, but price-clipped dust jacket.

A charming collection of light verse originally composed by Eliot for his godchildren and first published individually in magazines during the 1930s. The poems introduce a gallery of whimsical feline characters -including Macavity, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy - combining Eliot’s playful wordplay with rhythms reminiscent of music-hall and nursery rhyme traditions.

The book later achieved wide popular fame as the basis for the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, first staged in London in 1981, which became one of the longest-running and most commercially successful musicals in theater history.

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was one of the most influential poets and critics of the twentieth century and a central figure of literary modernism. Born in St. Louis and later a British citizen, he is best known for such landmark works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

Gallup A34a.

Price: $1,950.00