The New Collected Edition of the Cantos, inscribed by Pound on the half title, "a la gentilissima Diana Basedow, auguri et felicita, Ezra Pound, Venezia, fifth of march, 1971". The recipient is not identifiable, but given English/Italian inscription, she may have been an English or American ex-patriate living in Venice at the time. Pound spent the last years of his live in Venice, and died there the year after this inscription, in 1972 - he is buried, not far from the graves of Diaghilev and Stravinsky, on the cemetery island of San Michele. This copy is the second impression of the New Collected Edition (the first impression was 1964), which, as the jacket flap attests, "contains all that have been published in book form. To the previous volume have now been added Section: Rock-Drill (Cantos 85-95) and Thrones (Cantos 96-109)." Given the messy publishing of the final section (Cantos 110-118), this is as close as one is likely to get to an inscribed copy of Pound's magnum opus in a single complete, or near complete, edition.
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