Pirated Auden Erotica in England
AUDEN, W. H. The Gobble Poem A Gobble Poem. Snatched from the Notebooks of W.H. Auden & Now Believed to be in the Morgan Library … First English Printing [Wrapper:] The Gobble Poem.
8vo. Stapled as issued in purple wrappers printed in green; ff. [1], 5, text to rectos only; title with profile illustration of a depicted from the neck down; spine slightly sunned, slight wear to extremities; a very good copy.
Pirated second English printing (purportedly the first) of W. H. Auden’s erotic poem about a spontaneous sexual encounter with a twenty-four-year-old mechanic, first published in the Fuck You Magazine in New York in 1965.
Ed Sanders, the founder of Fuck You Magazine, allegedly obtained a copy of the typescript from an employee of the Morgan Library, reproducing it in vol. 5, no. 8, of the maga-zine of the Fuck You Press without Auden’s permission (under the title ‘The Gobble Poem’), with cover illustrations by Andy Warhol, publishing it separately as ‘The Platonic Blow’.
Of this edition, ‘copies which were put together first have light violet […] card covers, but when this stock was exhausted vivid green […] card covers were used’ (Bloomfield & Men-delson).
Bloomfield & Mendelson, pp. 367–68.
SKU: 2124853