Secondary Worlds: Essays. - 1969

New York: Random House,, 1969. First US edition, first printing, familiarly inscribed by the author the month after publication using his first name reserved for friends on the front free endpaper: "To Bill Gray from Wystan Feb 1969". The four essays comprising this volume are "The Martyr as Dramatic Hero", "The World of the Sagas", "The World of Opera", and "Words and the Word". The recipient Dr William ("Woods") Shelton Gray, Jr (1926-1993) fostered friendships with major literary figures such as Auden and T. S. Eliot, and on one occasion met Ezra Pound. Auden dedicated the poem "The Aliens" to Gray, toured Europe with him, and in 1971 found him a position as a visiting lecturer in American Literature at the University of Graz in Austria. This work, originally published in the UK the previous year, was based on speeches Auden gave at the 1967 T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures. Octavo. Original green quarter cloth, white paper-covered sides, titles to spine and front cover in gilt, top edge red. With dust jacket. Light spotting to spine, internally bright and clean. A very good copy indeed, in like dust jacket, spine panel lightly toned with nicks to head, closed tears to bottom of spine fold and rear panel, unclipped, remains bright. Bloomfield and Mendelson A62b.