Sale 2530 - Fine Books & Manuscripts, February 20, 2020

CORRECTED PROOFS AND ALS: “EVEN . . . WAR CANNOT INTERRUPT . . . LITERATURE” 149 c   NAIDU, SAROJINI. Complete galley proof of her book The Broken Wing mounted to recto pages bound into a book, Signed 7 times, including a signed foreword, with numerous corrections throughout; and several pages entirely in holograph: printer’s instructions signed, title-page signed in the byline, half-title and chapter title pages, dedication and acknowledgement pages, table of contents, and including 6 holograph poems tipped in of which three are signed, and an Autograph Letter Signed, to Edmund Gosse, tipped to a front blank. Tall 4to, ½ morocco, gilt-titled spine with raised bands; bookplate of Edmund Gosse on front pastedown, moderate scattered foxing throughout, galley sheets unevenly toned and some with printer’s ink stamp. [Hyderabad, August-September 1916] [6,000/9,000] The holograph poems: “The Flute-Player of Brindaban,” Signed and with a one-line note * “The Prayer of Islam,” Signed and with a 5-line note * “Kali the Mother” * “The Coming of Spring” * “Ecstacy,” Signed * “Invocation.” The letter: “. . . Can I wish you a greater happiness than will be yours and ours, in the Victory of the Allied Armies that are defending the Cause of Liberty, Truth, Art, Beauty and Civilization? “I have been reading on my sick bed— or rather in my Wheeled Chair that is the Symbol of my invalid Condition— your interesting and beautiful book Inter Arma & all yesterday I was reading a long quotation from your article in the Edinburgh Review on the Unity of France. It is good to realize that even the terrible upheaval of war cannot interrupt the inspiration of literature & the perfect expression of life, since, almost unconsciously, our ability to find expression is the outcome of the triumphant certainty of Ultimate Success. . . . “But I have today sent off to Mr. Heinemann my new book completed & revised, with dedication & foreword & everything ‘just so.’ To prove that a broken body does not —and in my case can never mean—a broken spirit, though I have named the book The Broken Wing. “I have asked Mr. Heinemann to let you see the full text of the book in case you care to cast a friendly & critical eye over your God Child’s work. I feel that some of the poems are very beautiful, though it might sound conceited to say so. And from cover to cover the book is intensely Oriental in spirit, more than the five earlier Volumes. “It is very beautiful just now after the rains, all Green rice fields and gold & purple rainbow wild flowers, and such sunsets! . . . [T]he Venetian School could not dream of remaking these colours & splendour . . . .” 4 pages, 8vo, written on a folded sheet, pale blue paper; folds, faint scattered foxing. Hyderabad, 9 September 1916. The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death & Destiny, 1915-1916 was first published in 1917 by William Heinemann in London.