The Waste Land

The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot is one of the most famous poems of the 20th century and is 434 lines long, divided into 5 sections: The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water and What the Thunder Said. Considered obscure and often abstract, the poem interweaves a number of legends and mythologies of both eastern and western influence in a variety of voices. Originally published in the 1922 issue of The Criterion (a U.K. magazine which was founded and edited by Eliot), it later appeared the subsequent month in the Dial magazine as its first U.S. appearance. The Wasteland first appeared in book form in 1922, published by Boni and Liveright in New York in an edition of 1000 copies. The first 500 copies were bound in a flexible black cloth, while the remaining copies were bound in a more traditional cloth hardcover. Both were issued in beige printed dust jackets. The first state is noted by the appearance of a dropped letter "a" on page 41 in the word mountain; the second issue has the word misprinted as "mount in." In nice condition, the first issue might be had in a jacket for $25,000 and up. The first U.K. book edition was published the following year in the U.K by Hogarth Press in an edition of 450 copies. Also of note is the second NY edition on 1923, also published by Boni and Liveright and highly collectible. - -