Mutations of the Phoenix. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR.

First Edition. 4to (25*19cm), pp. 51, [3, Publisher's Advertisements], Publisher's cloth-backed boards, paper label to spine, preserved in burgundy morocco drop-back box. Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press (Richmond), 1923.

A signed presentation copy from the Author to Jacob Kramer. Inscribed by the Author to the front free endpaper. Additionally inscribed by the Author with manuscript verses below, those too initialled, being the first appearance of this poem which was published by Faber & Faber in 1935 and entitled 'Night Negation', one of a selection from "Poems 1914 - 1934" by Read. The inscription reads:

"'For Jacob Kramer / Herbert Read / 26.x.1930
Trees / have held these flecks of light / these brittle stars that in the night / flash / on the unfolding fan of space
Blue fans / that bring me peace / and nerves that cease / to feel / the torture of day's lease
Of life and lust. O day that hurt / the heart and pillaged the short / and shattered frame of good report.
O noon that bled / till night had led / the lover's limbs to love's deathbed.
HR.'"

A neat anonymous gift inscription to upper pastedown, spine label worn, rubbed at extremities, endpapers lightly browned, a small number of marks to the binding. A very good example.

The collection of poems in this work, "contains, among other poems, a dramatic monologue from the point of view of John Donne, a meditation on physics, and an epigraph from A. N. Whitehead, which is a discussion of the connection between rhythm and life." (modernistarchives)

Herbert Read (1893-1968) was born at Muscoates Grange Farm in the Yorkshire Dales; the eldest child of tenant farmer Herbert Read, and his wife Eliza Strickland. Read left school aged 16 and worked as a clerk in Leeds before studying Law and Economics at Leeds University. He joined the Leeds Arts Club where his love of literature and art thrived. He served in the army during WW1, ultimately attaining the position of army captain. By the conclusion of the war in 1918, Read was a decorated war hero, published poet and dedicated pacifist.

During his war leave in London, Read met with the great writers of the day such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and T.S. Eliot who he had a lifelong friendship with. After the war, Read regularly wrote articles for T.S. Eliot's journal Criterion, and he published works with Virginia Woolf's publication house, the Hogarth Press.

Read held numerous important roles within academia and art. He served as a Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum from 1922-39, Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh University from 1931-1933, the Norton Professor at Harvard University from 1953-54, and was a trustee of the Tate Gallery.

In addition to British Modernism, Read was also passionate about contemporary European and Scandinavian art. He was the leading advocate in Britain and a personal friend of Pablo Picasso.

Jacob Kramer (1892-1962) was a Russian Empire-born painter who was involved in the Vorticist movement led by Wyndham Lewis. Born in Ukraine in 1892, the first child of Max; a court painter, and Cecilia Kramer, the family was forced flee to England due to the violent anti-Jewish pogroms of the 1890s. The Kramer family settled in Leeds, and with his family's encouragement, Kramer secured a scholarship from 1907-13 at the Leeds School of Art. During this time Kramer joined the Leeds Arts Club where he met Herbert Read. Writing to Herbert Read in 1918, Kramer stated that when he looked at an object he saw both its physical appearance and its spiritual manifestation.

(The Thoresby Society) (Artuk) (University of Leeds)

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