First edition, presentation copy inscribed by the editor to Enid Starkie, one of 100 copies on pur fil lafuma, of Rimbaud's student poems. The exceptional association inscription, to the half-title, reads: "A Mademoiselle Enid Starkie, ces excercises scolaires d'un grand poète en vive sympathie litteraire, Jules Mouquet, St-Valery-sur-Somme" ("To Ms. Enid Starkie, these schoolboy exercises of a great poet, with vivid literary friendship..."). Enid Starkie (1897-1970) was to become the chief biographer and literary critic in English of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, though at the time of this book's publication she had only published on the obscure poetry of Emile Verhaeren. Irish by birth, she studied at Alexandra College, Dublin, Somerville College, Oxford, and the Sorbonne, Paris. She graduated to teach Modern Languages (with an emphasis on French) at Oxford and for many decades established herself as a brilliant French scholar. Her biographies of Baudelaire (1933) and Rimbaud (Arthur Rimbaud in Abyssinia, 1937 and Arthur Rimbaud, 1947) played a major role in establishing their reputations among English readers, and she was granted the first Oxford doctorate for Modern Languages for her first work on Rimbaud. She later published on Gide, Proust, and others, was made officer to the Legion d'honneur in 1958 and CBE in 1967, and was well recognised in Oxford circles as an eccentric - a Time magazine article portrayed her as "a brilliant Rimbaud scholar who pub-crawls about Oxford in bright red slacks and beret while smoking cigars." Mouquet also published editions of the juvenile poetry of Baudelaire. Scarce in this issue, rare inscribed, and highly desirable with such an association.
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