James Elroy Flecker HASSAN First Penguin Edition
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James Elroy Flecker HASSAN First Penguin Edition
First edition, first print Penguin paperback of HASSAN by James Elroy Flecker and published by Penguin Books Ltd., UK, in 1948. It was first published in 1922.The book is in good condition for its age (clean covers with rubbing to corners and spine edges, some tanning and foxing, the odd small crease). There is some tanning to the pages and a small previous owner's inscription in blue ink on the top corner of the half title page and glue-like residue along the spine inside the back cover. Otherwise, internally, all the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Born November 5, 1884, in London, James Elroy Flecker received his education at Uppingham and Trinity College, Oxford. He joined the Consular Service in 1908, was posted to Constantinople in 1910, and from 1911 to 1913 Flecker served as vice-consul at Beirut. These appointments reinforced his life-long love for the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Switzerland where he died January 3, 1915.
Influenced both by his classical education and by his experiences in the Orient, he published five books of poetry, The Bridge of Fire (1908), Thirty-six Poems (1910), Forty-two Poems (1911), The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913), and The Old Ships (1915). He also brought out a novel, The King of Alsander (1914), and two successful plays of his, Hassan (1922) and Don Juan (1925), came out posthumously. His two plays were written in verse. In 1923-24, Hassan was lavishly and successfully produced in London. His friend T. E. Lawrence admired his poetry and had the 1918 edition of the collected poems of Flecker, as well as a copy of this play, at Clouds Hill.
Hassan - full title Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How he Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand is a play in five acts by Flecker first performed in September 1923.
An enduring testimony to his work is the excerpt from the verse drama Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How he Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand inscribed on the clock tower of the barracks of the British Army's 22 Special Air Service regiment in Hereford:
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.
The same inscription also appears on the NZSAS monument at Rennie Lines in the Papakura Military Camp.
"This is the story, based upon some old Turkish tales, which James Elroy Flecker dramatised when he was working in the Middle East in 1911. It has proved one of the most spectacular plays to be seen on the modern English stage, and has been broadcast with equal success. Those who now read it for the first time in this Penguin edition will discover that, on the printed pages as well Hassan is a vivid evocation of the traditional splendours and enormities of ancient Bagdad."
'Flecker had a splendor and breadth of vision unmatched among young English poets of his time' - Philadelphia North American
122 pages.
ISBN: n/a
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James Elroy Flecker HASSAN First Penguin Edition