Edith Sitwell [Wilfred Owen] – Wheels 1919 – Fourth Cycle – First Edition – First appearance of Owen’s Poetry

A first edition, first printing of the Fourth Cycle of ‘Wheels’, published by C. Daniel in 1919. Cloth-backed decorated paper-covered boards featuring a magnificent colour design by William Roberts who also contributes colour decorations to the endpapers and pastedowns. Printed paper spine label a little chipped. The boards somewhat dust soiled, and with some loss to the corner tips. A little very occasional fox spotting. No inscriptions. A very good copy.

‘Wheels : The Fourth Cycle’, is dedicated to the memory of Wilfred Owen, M.C.’. This was the first publication to print seven of Owen s poems together for the very first time : The Show, Strange Meeting, Á Terre, The Sentry, Disabled, The Dead Beat and The Chances. Only five poems were published in Owen’s lifetime (Three in ‘The Nation’ and two that appeared anonymously in the ‘Hydra’, a journal he edited in 1917 when he was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh). Owen’s poems were not to be published as a complete volume until the following year in 1920, when they were published by Chatto and edited by Siegfried Sassoon. It is interesting to note that the book includes five-page of ‘Press Notices’, none of which so much as mentions Owen). Other contributors include, Aldous Huxley, Iris Tree, Sherard Vines, and assorted Sitwells.