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EDDISON, E.R. The Worm Ouroboros. Illustrated by Keith Henderson. 8vo, publisher's gilt-stamped navy cloth; dust jacket, shallow chips to spine panel tips, short closed tear, spine panel and edges tanned; Jean Wick bookplate, two cracked signatures, flyleaves toned; preserved in a custom 1/4 morocco felt-lined drop-back case. London: Jonathan Cape, (1922)
first edition with a 2-page als laid-in. The letter, dated 14 August, 1936 captures Eddison's impassioned response to a fan letter written by John Melville Howard. In thanking Howard for his complimentary words, Eddison remarks, "You use big words about my Worm: the kind of words that are fit only when 'man meets man between the mountains': words which I myself would use (outside of the great poets - Shakespeare, Homer, Sappho, Webster's Italian tragedies) only of two or three books in the world; perhaps of Wuthering Heights, or Conrad's Arrow of Gold. I am not such a fool as to think my work deserves such a judgment, but neither am I such a fool as to waste my life on work that aims lower than that height. For the rest, I think that there is, as you say, a demanding demon; and that an artist is neither a magician nor a creator, but simply a faithful contemplator and discoverer." Work by the author famously described by J.R.R. Tolkien as "the greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read" (Letters of Tolkien, p. 258).
