The poems of William Canton. (First edition, with an autograph letter signed by the author)

London ; Calcutta ; Sydney : George G. Harrap, 1927. First edition. Octavo (175 mm), publisher’s gilt-lettered and decorated navy cloth (very fine), in unclipped dust jacket (spine sunned, otherwise excellent); frontispiece portrait of the author, pp. 173; edges with spotting, but internally very clean throughout; loosely inserted is a handwritten letter from William Canton to Henry George, the London agent for the Australian publishers Angus & Robertson, headed ‘Inglewood, 119 Audley Road, Hendon, NW4, Dec. 7 1925’, 2 pages, octavo, thanking him for the gift Messrs. A & R presented him with on his 80th birthday: ‘Anything more kind or more moving than Messrs Angus & Robertson’s gift I have never met with. It was a surprising pleasure to learn that they still remember me … Believe me yours very truly, William Canton’; also enclosed is a newspaper cutting with an obituary for Canton, dated Monday, May 3 1928.

Provenance: Henry George (1854, Bristol – 1938, London), London agent for Angus & Robertson 1904-1938; Hector MacQuarrie (1889-1973), writer and traveller, close friend of Henry George; thence by descent.

George Harrap, son of the publisher George G. Harrap, had spent the years 1915-1922 in Sydney, Australia, where he established the Australasian Publishing Company. Thus there is a triangular connection between Canton, Harrap, and the Sydney publishing firm Angus & Robertson.