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What is a Classic? by T. S. Eliot

About the Item

First Edition, Second Impression. of An address delivered before the Virgil Society on the 16th of October 1944. London: Faber and Faber, 1945. 8vo; 8 1/4 x 5 3/8 inches (218 x 135 mm); 32 pp., printed on heavy laid paper, lower edges uncut. Bright blue/turquoise cloth boards, gilt lettering on spine, light bumping on corners and tail of spine. Cream dust jacket printed in black and red, price clipped, a little thumbed and faded, extremities of dust jacket frayed with small chips at head and tail of spine panel. Bookseller ticket pasted inside front cover, Melbourne, Australia. [Gallup A45b] Near fine in Very good dust-jacket. This is the text of the first Annual Address to the Virgil Society, of which T. S. Eliot was the First President, 1943/44. Eliot sets out to define that the classic is a work that reflects the maturity of a culture. Indeed, he argues that “[a] classic can occur only when a civilization is mature; when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.” From the estate of Robert Cecil Bald (1901 – 1965), an Australian scholar of English Literature, who moved to the US to teach at Cornell University in 1937 and was then a professor at the University of Chicago from 1952 to 1965
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 8.5 in (21.59 cm)Width: 5.75 in (14.61 cm)Depth: 0.5 in (1.27 cm)
  • Materials and Techniques:
  • Place of Origin:
  • Period:
  • Date of Manufacture:
    1950
  • Condition:
    Wear consistent with age and use.
  • Seller Location:
    Middletown, NY
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: BH11291stDibs: LU8340235460792

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