A sample copy, [1929], of part of a projected printed book by Ezra Pound, to be called 'The Complete Works of Guido Cavalcanti', containing also four autograph poems and a prose fragment by Dylan Thomas, [1936]-[early 1940s], and two typescript poems by Vernon Watkins, [c. 1939]. Pound's book was intended for publication in 1929 but was abandoned, with only the first 56 pages printed, when the Aquila Press went bankrupt. The present volume appears to be a sample copy, of which two similar ones are recorded (see Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Charlottesville, 1983), p. 153), consisting of the first two gatherings only (ff. 2-9) and filled out with blank leaves (ff. 10-74). The original Aquila Press fragments were later incorporated into the composite work Guido Cavalcanti Rime, ed. by Ezra Pound (Genoa, [1932]).
The Dylan Thomas poems are 'Then was my neophyte', [1936] (f. 11) (published in Twenty-five Poems (London, 1936), pp. 40-41), 'We lying by seasand', [1937x1939] (f. 74 verso) (first published in Poetry (Chicago), 49.4 (January 1937), 183, and collected in The Map of Love (London, 1939), p. 8), 'Paper and sticks', [early 1940s] (tipped in on f. 12) (first published in Seven, 6 (Autumn 1939), 6, and collected in Deaths and Entrances (London, 1946), p. 23), and 'Once below a time', [early 1940s] (tipped in on ff. 13-14) (first published in Life and Letters Today, 24.31 (March 1940), 274-275; see Collected Poems 1934-1952 (London, [1952]), pp. 132-133); the prose fragment (tipped in on f. 15) is the end of 'One Warm Saturday', [1938], the last story in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (London, 1940), pp. 253-254. The two Vernon Watkins poems, 'The windows', 1939, and 'A bronze head', [c. 1939], are apparently unpublished (tipped in on ff. 16-17). A dried leaf found loose within the volume has been placed in an archival sleeve.
