[Edward Marsh, editor.] Unbound [proof?] sheets of the rare 1923 edition on fine paper of 'Georgian Poetry 1913-1915'

[10] + 244 + [2]pp., 8vo, consisting of sixteen loose signatures, unstitched and unbound, wrapped in a piece of green paper on which is written in pencil 'Group 2 | Special'. Very good, on lightly-aged 'Holbein' wove paper. Each signature with uncut edges, and with only the first four of the eight leaves opened. The type in this edition has not been reset from the first one of 1915, and the only differences detected from that edition are: ONE, 'Published November, 1915.' at the head of the reverse of the half-title; TWO, publication details at foot of title reading 'THE POETRY BOOKSHOP | 35 DEVONSHIRE ST. THEOBALDS RD. | LONDON W.C. | MCMXXIII'; THREE, footnote on p.3 (keyed in to the title on the first line of the page) reading: '*Copyright by Gordon Bottomley, 1915, in the United States of America.'; FOUR, numerous additions to the 'Bibliography', pp.241-244, adding titles of poetry books published by the various contributors between the 1915 first printing and 1922; FIVE, final leaf carrying two pages of advertisements, the first beginning with 'Georgian Poetry (I) 1911-1912 | Sixteenth Thousand. Brown Boards. 6/- net | (postage 5d.).' and also carrying advertisements for the three other volumes in the series, as well as two 'Books Decorated by Claud Lovat Fraser' and W. H. Davies's 'Shorter Lyrics of the Twentieth Century, 1900-1922'; the second (and final) page advertising, within a ruled border, 'The Poetry Bookshop' (with 'READINGS OF POETRY' and 'LISTS'). Printer's slug centred outside the border at foot of page reads: 'Printed by W. H. SMITH & SON, The Arden Press, Stamford Street, | London, S.E.1.' This is the second volume of the five in Marsh's influential series (it gave its name to a whole school of poetry and provoked contempt amongst the modernists), covering the years 1911-1922, and features contributions by Gordon Bottomley, Rupert Brooke (including his most famous poem, 'The Soldier'), William H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, John Drinkwater, James Elroy Flecker, Wilfred Wilson Gibson, Ralph Hodgson, D. H. Lawrence, Francis Ledwidge, John Masefield, Harold Monro, James Stephens and Lascelles Abercrombie. In his 1988 bibliography of the Poetry Bookshop, J. Howard Woolmer noted (p.31) that 'No copy of the special edition of Georgian Poetry II has been located. It was published in June 1923 at 7s 6d, was bound in buckram with dust jacket, and the pagination would be identical to that in the original edition with the exception of the bibliography which was probably extended to include books by the contributors published since 1915. The size and the printer would be the same as the original edition.' As the above indicates, Woolmer was right in his surmises, and it may be that this 'special edition' was not published. The eight copies of a 1923 edition on COPAC and OCLC WorldCat would appear to be copies of the 'Seventeenth Thousand' of the trade edition, published in that year.