Sappho: A New Rendering with translation by H. de Vere Stacpoole. Undated but circa 1920. Good condition in grey-blue cloth covered boards.
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born around 620 BCE on the island of Lesbos. She was highly acclaimed in her time but the facts of her life are largely unknown, although it is said she ran a school for women, and once jumped from a cliff to soothe her heart broken by the unrequited love of a sailor. We know she wrote poems of love and romance from a rarely seen first person perspective, likely for the stage, to be read aloud accompanied by music. It remains a mystery how her work was circulated, and why only fragments of poems on ancient papyrus and in quotations by other authors remain.
There is writing in pencil on the first interior board, some numbers, 'First Edition 4/6', and, neatly, in black ink, with what was surely a fountain pen in a steady hand,
Michael Davie
from Martin
Cambridge
May 31 1941
in memory of a lesson in the Spring
We wonder if Michael and Martin were lovers, or simply lovers of the Sapphic, the term now used to describe women loving women and and Aeolic, four-lined verse form.