Edition details
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. 11 colour plates by Tom Phillips RA, giclée printed by Pureprint on Symbol Tatami Ivory paper and hand-tipped on to the Zerkall paper. Printed letterpress on Zerkall mould-made paper by Hand & Eye Letterpress. Limitation page signed by Tom Phillips. Half-bound in vellum by Ludlow Bookbinders with spine blocked in 22-carat gold, violet cloth sides printed in grey with a text design by Tom Phillips. Dark blue Colorplan Damask Amethyst endpapers. Gilded page top edge with natural deckle retained on fore and bottom edges. Light brown cloth-covered clamshell box lined with soft, napped fabric in purple and blind-blocked on front and blocked with brown foil on spine. 84pp. 11×15×1½in. 350 copies. (US$1500 – available in USA and Canada only).
About the book
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land moves through fragments of conversation, remembered literature, city streets and images of spiritual drought. Different voices and settings create a modern world in which inherited meanings appear broken but are never entirely lost. References to myth, religion and earlier poetry connect private experience with larger patterns of death and possible renewal. First published in 1922, the poem helped transform literary modernism through its shifts of perspective and form. Its difficulties are inseparable from its power to make dislocation itself part of the reading experience.
