POUND, Ezra. A Draft of XVI Cantos. Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1925.
2° (383 x 258mm). Endpapers, [\Kp\k]2 and A1.4 [i.e. pp.[1]-6 and [11]-12] printed on laid, watermarked Roma paper, the other leaves printed on wove proof paper. Woodcut publisher's device on title, woodcut initials by and after Henry Strater printed in red and black, woodcut tailpieces by and after Strater. (Some browning on proof paper leaves.) Original blue/grey wrappers, later morocco-backed box (wrappers a little faded on outer areas, edges lightly rubbed and bumped). Provenance: Agnes Bedford (ownership inscription on front free endpaper)--manuscript correction on p.34, l.16.
FIRST EDITION, ONE OF SOME SIX 'AUTHOR'S PROOF' COPIES. AGNES BEDFORD'S COPY, SENT TO HER AT POUND'S REQUEST, AND SIGNED BY POUND 'Ezra Pound , 1929' on the title. In addition to the 90 copies of the limited edition, at least six unnumbered copies were made up from extra and proof sheets, and were marked 'AUTHOR'S PROOF' on the colophon. One of these was retained by Pound, and others were sent at his request to Agnes Bedford (a friend and musician who contributed to Antheil and The Treatise on Harmony, used Pound's texts for her Five Troubadour Songs and rented his flat in Holland Place Chambers; this copy), Ford Madox Ford, Homer L. Pound and Mrs B.M.G. Adams (née Scratton). Although Gallup records two copies that are composed of Roma and proof paper bound in the same sequence as the Bedford copy, he does not note any with the emendation on p.34, l.16, which corrects 'three by one third' to 'three and a third'. This correction--which is incorporated into the text published in A Draft of XXX Cantos (Paris: 1930)--does not appear to have been made by either Pound or Bedford, but was possibly added by the printer. Loosely inserted is a 4-page, 4° prospectus for the work printed in red and black and illustrated with an initial. This prospectus caused Pound much anxiety, vented in letters to William Bird, owner of The Hours Press--'it seems ALL the more reason for cutting away offending parts: i.e. 1) the love knot [at the lower right hand corner]; 2) the tail of 'P'; and 3) the extra scene across top of page' (E. Pound The Letters ... 1907-1941 (London: 1951), p.258) and 'Do recall that the title of that book is 'A DRAFT of 16 Cantos for a poem of some length' (op. cit., p.259). In the published edition the first page of the fourth canto remained unchanged, but the title was corrected; despite this the volume delighted Pound, who wrote to Bird on 25 January 1925: 'A bhloody ghood job [...] Placuit occulis' (E. Pound The Letters [...]. 1907-1941 (London: 1951), p.268). Gallup Pound (1983) A26 (describing the prospectus in a note); Published in Paris p.406.