Topic 2: Three Mountains & Contact



Three Mountains Press: Ezra Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos
Ezra Pound,
A draft of XVI cantos of Ezra Pound: for the beginning of a poem of some length
Now first made into a book with initials by Henry Strater.
Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1925.
"Author's proof" and other (disbound) Whatman and Roma sheets. Gift of Mr. William R. Cagle.

The most spectacular production of Bird's Three Mountains Press was this lavish book, the first separate volume collecting Pound's series of Cantos. Pound wrote to Kate Buss in May 1923 that it would be of "UNRIVALLED magnificence," "one of the real bits of printing; modern book to be jacked up to something near level of medieval mss. No Kelmscott mess of illegibility." Limited to 90 copies, the scarcity factor of the Pound book was further ratcheted up by issuing five copies on Japan paper, fifteen on Whatman, and the remaining seventy on still a third paper variety, Roma, with a special Ezra Pound watermark, affording multiple collecting opportunities for Pound's admirers and patrons.
 
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Updated 5 June 2000 by the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
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URL: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/paris/paris2.html