The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956.
Illustrated by Enrico Arno. First Edition. Hardcover.
First Edition, in original publisher’s mailing envelope. Typography, binding and decorations by Enrico Arno.
The sixth poem written by T. S. Eliot for Faber & Gwyer’s Christmas-themed Ariel poetry series envisioned as holiday cards. Eliot was 66 at the time this poem was written in 1954 and had been an Anglican since 1927. In this short 34-line poem, he exhorts the child to hold onto his Christmas “spirit of wonder” so that before “the end, the eightieth Christmas,” the accumulated memories “May be concentrated into a great joy / Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion / When fear came upon every soul: / Because the beginning shall remind us of the end / And the first coming of the second coming.”
Item #9008805-5/8 x 8-5/8", yellow decoration & white print on black paper over boards, unpaginated (10 printed pages including endpapers), illustrated.
A bit of wear to extreme corners and spine ends, else fine in moderately worn but complete mailing envelope with 1956 Christmas stamps and addressed to a child “von deine Mutti” (from your Mother).
Price: $50.00