XXI Poems: Towards the Source, 1897

Component identifier:

Item 13

Content Summary:

Brennan's working copy for the preparation of the text of POEMS, 1913. The title page, and 4pp of text have been removed.

Half-title has been altered by the poet to read Poems by C.J. Brennan Below this he has written, "The new volume (to be published by G.B. Philip Son) is to begin like this booklet, i.e., the half-title must be the first page of a section, the title-page the third, etc., etc." The printer or publisher's editor however, ignored this instruction.

The text of some of the poems has been amended; lower case letters at the commencement of certain lines have been replaced by capitals; poems which are to be omitted are cancelled through and annotated; and dates have been added to those poems intended for inclusion in the new volume.

An interesting feature of this volume is the punctuation. Brennan has worked carefully through all the poems adding marks copiously. He has deleted many of the existing marks and substituted others. But when Poems was printed, the punctuation was again revised in certain passages. The only certain thing about Brennan's punctuation was its uncertainty, for it was always a nuisance to him.

The book is bound in half-blue morocco. A Riviere binding, with specimens of each of the four variant "Brennan" bookplates etched for me by Sir Lionel Lindsay. These have been laid down on the end papers.

Inserted is an autograph letter from Brennan to Brereton. n.d., 3pp, 8vo. Written from Newport during 1911. After comment upon the Nibelungen theories of Lachmann, and some rather puzzlingly constructed German phrases, Brennan continues: "I have not yet got Lilley's Magazine - its a bore having to go to the P.O. here...This scrawl keeps varying: a bad pen...Its possible - keep even the possibility a dead secret from every and any person whatsoever - that I may drag out the somewhat ancient corpse of my poetic past ('Master, he stinketh') and try and embalm and coffin it properly: in which eventual case I should require your counsel... But let even this far off whiff from the sepulchre remain between us two. Yours, C.B."

This was probably Brennan's first intimation to his friend of his intention to publish a collected edition of his poems.

In a letter to Brereton, 30 June 1899, Brennan wrote: "...I am sitting once more in sackcloth and ashes on the corpse of my POETIC GENIUS..."

Names:

Christopher Brennan

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