POUND, Ezra. The Cantos ... CX–CXVI. New York: Fuck You Press. 1967.
Small 4to. Mimeographed sheets, stapled as issued, with a cover design by Joe Brainard; some age-toning to edges, slight offsetting to front pastedown, minimal staining to rear cover; internally clean and fresh; a very good copy.
First edition, no. 239 of 300 copies. The pirated first appearance of Cantos 110–116, whose publication helped force the issue of the authorised edition.
In 1960, Ezra Pound sent drafts of seven cantos to the Paris Review. These manuscripts subsequently passed from interviewer Donald Hall to Tom Clark, then completing a doctoral thesis on Pound at Cambridge. Several years later, Clark shared the drafts with the poet, publisher, and countercultural activist Ed Sanders, who had specifically requested material capable of causing a literary sensation.
Sanders and Clark commissioned a cover design from Joe Brainard and mimeographed an edition of 300 copies in Sanders’s New York apartment under the imprint of the Fuck You Press. The unauthorised publication attracted considerable attention and is generally credited with accelerating the appearance of the authorised text. Through this unlikely episode, Pound’s late work became associated with the Mimeograph Revolution and the American small-press underground of the 1960s.
SKU: 2120898