1914 and Other Poems - Rupert Brooke 1915 - Sidgwick &, London - First Edition A fine first edition of Brooke’s second and most famous collection of poetry, published two months after his death, which contains, amongst others, both ‘The Soldier’ and ‘The Dead’. With portrait frontispiece from a photograph taken by Sherrill Schell in 1913, and the delicate and scarce dust jacket which is in two pieces but shows well on the book itself. Housed in later quarter red morocco slipcase.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home
.’
  The English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887-1915) was known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have prompted the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". Brooke died of sepsis whilst heading towards Gallipoli with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and was buried on the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.

Provenance: David C. Titus with his engraved armourial bookplate (’Ad Finem Fidelis’).

References: Keynes, 6 - One of 1,000 copies printed and published 16th June 1915.

Octavo (book size 19.5x13.4cm), pp. 63 [1]. In publisher’s dark navy blue cloth, paper label to spine, titled in black and enclosed by red line, additional spine label loosely affixed to final page, top egde trimmed others untrimmed. Dust jacket with price of ‘2/6 net’ barely visible to chipped spine, perhaps removed intentionally before being gifted, delicate dust jacket in two parts with vertical split along spine. Later quarter red morocco slipcase.
  Condition: Fine in dust jacket which is split in two parts along the crease of the spine, some wear to corners and spine ends, larger chip to centre of spine where price was, perhaps deliberately, in later fine slipcase.   Ref: 110308   Price: HK$ 12,000