THE VINE PRESS, STEYNING - Lillygay, Steyning, 1920, 8vo, woodcut illustrations, original wrappers, FIRST EDITION, NUMBER 504 OF 550 COPIES "PRINTED ON ANTIQUE LAID PAPER". With 3 other books from the same press. (4)

THE VINE PRESS, STEYNING - Lillygay: An Anthology of Anonymous Poems. Steyning: The Vine Press, 1920. 8vo (195 x 125mm). Half title, title printed in red and black with woodcut illustration, full-page woodcut illustrations by Eric and Percy West, the poem "Colophon" printed in red, the actual colophon printed in black, with a 4-page printed prospectus for the press loosely-inserted. Original printed wrappers (quite heavily spotted, joints torn). FIRST EDITION. LIMITED TO 590 COPIES, THIS NUMBER 504 OF 550 COPIES "PRINTED ON ANTIQUE LAID PAPER." EXUBERANTLY INSCRIBED [?]BY THE EDITOR ON THE FRONT FREE ENDPAPER, "The Editor. Victor B. Neuburg, [followed by illegible words - see illustration], vii:xi:MCMxxxi." Victor Benjamin Neuburg (1883-1940) was a poet, writer, theosophist and occultist, friend and sometime partner of Aleister Crowley. Having served in the First World War, he moved to Steyning in West Sussex where he founded The Vine Press. The present collection was its first publication. Although the title page describes the poems contained in it as "anonymous", many were largely Neuburg's own work, or his free adaptations of traditional ballads. The composer Philip Heseltine, better known under his pseudonym Peter Warlock, set five of them to music. With 3 other books from the same press, namely Songs of the Groves: Records of the Ancient World (Steyning, 1921, 8vo, woodcut illustrations, original cloth-backed pictorial boards, dust-jacket, lacking lower half of backstrip, FIRST EDITION, NUMBER 206 OF 550 COPIES "ON ANTIQUE LAID PAPER"), Swift Wings: Songs in Sussex (Steyning, 1921, 8vo, 2 woodcut illustrations, original cloth-backed red pictorial boards, FIRST EDITION, NUMBER 154 OF 550 COPIES "ON ANTIQUE LAID PAPER") and Larkspur: A Lyric Garland (Steyning, 1922, 8vo, woodcut illustrations, original cloth-backed pictorial boards, FIRST EDITION, NUMBER 451 OF 550 COPIES "ON ANTIQUE LAID PAPER"). (4)