The Waste Land

Or The Horror
collage, watercolour

The Fisher King
collage, watercolour

A Game of Cards
collage, watercolour

Tanta Tanta
collage, watercolour

The Bells of Hell
collage, watercolour

The Typist
collage, watercolour

Fragments
collage, watercolour

 Phlebas
collage, watercolour

Nayland
collage, watercolour

Mon Semblable
collage, watercolour

Shantih
collage, watercolour

Outer jacket and spine

Consisting of five sections and Eliot’s own ‘Notes’, which explain his many cultural allusions, quotations and half-quotations, the poem has become a beacon of literature in English.

Combining the Grail legend with that of the Fisher King, and mixing it all with a large dose of contemporary British society, the poem alternates between prophecy and satire, and features unannounced changes in speaker, time and location to produce a vast and dissonant cultural collage, which, infused with a post-First World War sense of depression and futility, became a rallying cry of youth against an older generation and a landmark of Modernist poetry.

For the letterpress-printed text, Folio secured handmade mould-made Zerkall paper – the last available anywhere in the world – with the deckle retained on two edges and gilding on the top edge.

Tom Phillips RA, well-known for his ability to read within a text and peel back its layers of meaning, has contributed 11 stunning illustrations printed giclée on Tatami paper and hand-tipped onto the page, as well as his own ‘Notes on the Images’. He has also designed fabulous hand-drawn lettering for the title, printed on the binding and blind-blocked on the cloth-covered clamshell box. Limited to just 350 copies, and only available in the US and Canada, each hand-numbered book has been signed by the artist.

Text excerpted from the website of The Folio Society