Poems in English. London: Calder, 1961. First UK Edition. Pp, 53. Publisher’s light blue cloth boards, in grey dust jacket printed in black. A fine bright copy.

Signed by Samuel Beckett on the title page.

A collection containing Whoroscope, Echo’s Bones, Two Poems and Quartre Poemes. “From the dramatic monologue ‘Whoroscope’ of 1930 to the strange and beautiful ‘Dieppe’ poems, each line shows the authority and purity of a great master.”

It was as a poet that Samuel Beckett launched himself in the little reviews of 1930s Paris. ‘Whoroscope’ was Beckett’s first separately published work, and won a prize for having been chosen as the best poem on Time in a competition judged by Richard Aldington and Nancy Cunard in 1930. In the hospital and nursing home where he spent his final days, Beckett wrote his last work, the poem “What is the Word” (Comment dire) in 1988.