POUND (Ezra).
Money Pamphlets nos. 1-6.
Very good, paper wrappers browned, some minor dinting to covers, staple bindings slightly rusted, and some corners gently knocked. Ian Angus’ ownership inscription to be found on ffep in several.
A rare, full set of Pound’s An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, Gold and Work, What is Money For?, A Visiting Card, Social Credit: an Impact , and America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War. Marking the first publication of many of Pound’s mid-War economic tracts in English, Peter Russel begins each volume with an explanation that ‘[t]he object of this series of reprinted pamphlets is to present to the public at a reasonable price the evidence in the much discussed case of Ezra Pound,’ claiming to have ’no political object in view’; one is indeed forced to draw one’s own conclusions when reading them. On the one hand, Pound offers in these texts an extensive justification of the relationship between his poetry and his politico-economic stances: ‘An epic is a poem including history. No one can understand history without understanding economics.’ On the other, Pound’s obsessive denouncement of usury is in evidence throughout, undergirding much of the fascism and antisemitism that can also be found in these pages. As uncomfortable and objectionable as much of this material can be, it is also deeply implicated in the development of his later Cantos. An illuminating yet often troubling companion to some of the most important poetry of the 20th century.
