A3-a First edition

Title Page

PAGAN POEMS.

GEORGE MOORE.

LONDON:

NEWMAN AND CO.,

43, HART STREET

BLOOMSBURY, W.C.

short rule

MDCCCLXXXI.

Launch

Published March 1881 at 6/-

Description

Height: 7 1/4 in; 7.25 in; 18.42 cm

Width: 4 3/4 in; 4.75 in; 12.07 cm

[ ]2 (tipped in), 1-108, 112 (tipped in); pp iv, 164, comprising:

title page, verso blank, pp [i-ii];

The title page of a presentation copy “To Oscar Wilde” is pictured in A. Edward Newton’s Amenities of Book-Collecting (1918), and again in the sale catalogue of the Newton collection, sold at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 14-16 May 1941.

table of CONTENTS, pp [iii]-iv;
text, pp 1-164;

Some copies have the 3 in page number 53 imperfect, and in other copies it has been incorrectly replaced by a 5. This seems to have no significance in denoting priority, as each form has been noted in copies with, and in copies without, the title leaf. A. Edward Newton in “Conversations in the Library at ‘Oak Knoll' ’’ in This Book-Collecting Game, 1928, mentions an errata slip in his copy of Pagan Poems, but as no such slip, nor any other reference to one has been noted, it seems probable that Mr. Newton may have confused Pagan Poems with Flowers of Passion (A1), which does have an errata slip.

endpapers brown where facing;
all edges trimmed; bound in dark blue cloth, spine gilt lettered

PAGAN

POEMS

rule

GEORGE

MOORE

NEWMAN

Pagan Poems is found in three forms:

As above, with title leaf an integral part of first gathering, and with the author’s initials, GM, in ink in his autograph, written across the lower right hand comer of the publisher’s imprint on the title page.

In a copy now in the Fountain Lawn Library of Dr. LaFayette Butler of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, there is an inscription on the verso of the title leaf,

“To A J A Symons, From George Moore who recognizes this copy to be one of the 20 copies that he received from the publisher Newman before he withdrew from business and tore out the title pages from the whole edition. GM”

Actually he underestimated the number of copies left unmutilated, as there are more than twenty presentation copies with the original title leaf in libraries and private collections, and there are also some copies, uninscribed except for the author's initials, that have the title leaf as a part of the gathering.
One such copy, in the Chapin Library at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, seems at first glance to have no initials after the publisher’s imprint on the title page, but a close inspection shows that they were once present and have been carefully removed by some previous owner or overzealous librarian who apparently failed to realize their significance.

As above, except title leaf has been removed.
As above, but sophisticated with a new title leaf of a slightly different paper, skillfully tipped on the stub of the original leaf. The cancel title page is printed from an almost imperceptibly different setting of type, and does not have the author’s initials inked in after the publisher's imprint. These leaves were fabricated and inserted by an unknown hand at a later date.

[Formatted as an ordered list for readability; quotations marks added to titles]

“À I. d’A”
“Sonnet: Spleen”
“Ode to a Beggar Girl”
“À une Poitrinaire”
“A Parisian Idyl”
“Sappho”
“Sonnet: The Corpse” [revised from Flowers of Passion]
“Ballad of a Lost Soul” [revised from Flowers of Passion]
“Sonnet: Chez Moi”
“A Love Letter”
“Sonnet: Used Up”
“La Maitresse Maternelle”
“Bernice” [revised from Flowers of Passion]
“A Joyous Death”
“The Portrait”
“A Night of June” [reprinted from Flowers of Passion]
“In the Morning”
“The Temple of Time”
“Sonnet”
“Ballad of a Lover of Life”
“Ambition”
“A Page of Boccace” [reprinted from Flowers of Passion]
“Sonnet: Une Fantaisie Parisienne”
“The Temptation”
“The Hermaphrodite”
“A Modem Poem” [the lyric on pp 152-54 of this long poem is a revision of ”The Love of the Past” in the Spectator, 11 December 1880]

Bibliographical Comment

Pagan Poems was never reprinted, but individual poems were used by GM in other books and several seem to be the first working of ideas later utilized by him in books and stories.

A revised version of “À une Poitrinaire” is used in chapter X of Mike Fletcher (A14);
it is again reprinted, minus its title, in section XI of the 1904 and subsequent editions of Confessions of a Young Man (A12-c et seq.);
and it finally appears in “A Waitress” in Memoirs of My Dead Life (A29).
A further revision of the first sixteen lines of “Ballad of a Lost Soul” is used in act III of The Strike at Arlingford (A18).
“Chez Moi” and “Ambition” were revised and reprinted as “Two Poems; A Vau-l'Eau, Une Crise” in Court and Society Review, 9 December 1886.
“Ballad of a Lover of Life” is reprinted in a revised form as “The Ballade of Lovelace” in Ballades and Rondeaus (B4);
and a further revision, “The Ballade of Don Juan Dead,” is used in chapter II of Mike Fletcher (A14).
The lyric on pp 152-54 of “A Modem Poem” is reprinted as “The Sweetness of the Past” in section IX of Confessions of a Young Man (A12).
Malcolm Brown in George Moore: A Reconsideration suggests “A Parisian Idyl” as being the possible genesis of “The Lovers of Orelay” in Memoirs of My Dead Life (A29) and “A Modem Poem” as that of A Drama in Muslin (A9).
“La Maitresse Maternelle” seems to be the genesis of A Modem Lover (A5),
and the song on pp 73-74 of this duo-drama was revised as “Nuit de Septembre” and printed in the Pall Mall Gazette, 15 January 1895, in the Bookman, October 1895, and reprinted in section XI of the 1904 and subsequent editions of Confessions of a Young Man (A12-c et seq.).
It also has been suggested by Thomas G. Ware, in a review of the GM bibliography (Eire-Ireland, Summer 1971), that “Ode to a Beggar Girl” anticipates “the central agony” of Esther Waters (A19);
and Susan Dick in her edition of Confessions of a Young Man (A12-5a), notes that “Chez Moi” envisions the fashionably decadent apartment that GM describes in chapter four of that book.

Source: Curated by George Moore Interactive LLC (georgemooreinteractive.org) — Shared for research, educational, and personal use.