|
AN ANTHOLOGY OF MINE - 1923
REX WHISTLER
With introduction and afterword by Laurence Whistler
and commentary by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil
|
 This is a beautifully produced and boxed facsimile copy of Rex Whistler’s anthology of favourite poems, handwritten by him in a lined exercise book and annotated with drawings inspired by the words. Whistler was 18 when he started the anthology, and at the time was studying at the Slade School of Art in London, a ‘star pupil’ in the words of his brother Lawrence. The anthology is a romantic expression of Whistler’s recently discovered awareness of poetry, and there are many familiar poems here and a few less familiar. Yeats, Walter De La Mare, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Keats, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, and many others.
This is lovely little volume that shows some of the interests and loves of a young talented artist in the early 1920s. Whistler’s output over the next twenty years was prolific, and his death as a Welsh Guards troop commander in July 1944, on his first day of action, was indeed a tragedy. This charming anthology captures a moment of innocence when another war seemed inconceivable.
The Editor
An Anthology of Mine, by Rex Whistler, is published by Pimpernel Press www.pimpernelpress.com
|
|
