Lot 297
Gardner, Brian, editor. Up the Line to Death. The War Poets 1914-1918. Foreword by Edmund Blunden, first edition, with a 14 line autograph manuscript poem by Siegfried Sassoon on half title "In the Church of St. Ouen" signed and dated March 4th, 1917, and another poem "If after death, love, comes a waking…" on verso, 8 lines, untitled and unsigned, but in the same hand, original cloth, dust jacket, 8vo, London: Methuen, 1964
Loosely inserted is a short typed letter signed to Dennis Silk from Laurence Whistler, 28th March 1979, and a photocopy of a letter from Robert Graves to Timothy Budd, 1971.
Patrick Campbell in Siegfried Sassoon: A Study of the War Poetry (McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina and London, 1999) p. 139, refers to "In the Church of St. Ouen" and notes, "It seems curious that Sassoon did not publish this poem during a lifetime that ended with the resolution of his spiritual quest. Perhaps his abiding conviction was that the sonnet was too "purple", too self-indulgent for public consumption." First published in Siegfried Sassoon: Poet's Pilgrimage, assembled by Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Victor Gollancz, 1973. "If after death…" appears to be unpublished.
