Good-bye to All That.: An Autobiography.

London: Jonathan Cape,, 1929. First edition, second issue, with the infamous Sassoon poem excised and replaced with cancels and asterisks on pp. 290 and 341-3. Sassoon was horrified to learn that the book contained a poem he had written to Graves in letter form and demanded the recall of the edition and the excision of the offending pages. Centred on the author's experiences in the First World War, the book was published more than ten years after the end of the conflict, when Graves was still suffering from the trauma of fighting in the trenches. It was written in less than four months and under the influence of the young American poet Laura Riding, his lover and muse. "She also acted as intellectual and spiritual midwife both to a kind of personal rebirth, and to Graves's writing Good-bye to All that (1929), the war-period autobiography which made him famous. In its original form, this is a searing work of genius in which Graves offers up a heavily rewritten version of his past life upon the altar of his present love" (ODNB). Octavo (188 x 128 mm). Twentieth-century brown morocco by Bayntun-Rivière, spine with raised bands, gilt lettering in compartments, marbled endpapers, edges gilt. Portrait frontispiece and 7 plates (one double-page), including trench maps. With the errata slip tipped-in between pp. 398-9 as issued. Small faint marks to margins of a couple of leaves, otherwise a fine copy. Higginson A32b.