THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

New York: Dodd, Mead and Company., 1922. First edition, first printing. Octavo. Publisher's original red cloth with titles in gilt to the upper board and spine. Top edge gilt, the others untrimmed. Blue and white pictorial endpapers. Illustrated with 17 black and white full-page plates by Stella Langdale and numerous in-text vignettes. Small contemporary bookseller's label to the rear pastedown (Brentano's, Paris). Two related newspaper clippings loosley laid in. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with a little dulling to the spine. The contents with offsetting to the facing pages where the newspaper cuttings have sat (not affecting illustrated pages), some light offsetting to the introduction page/title page verso, and some occasional light foxing are otherwise in very good order. The uncommon first edition of Stella Langdale's wonderfully illustrated version of Francis Thompson's ode celebrating the pursuit of the human soul by God's love. Langdale's somewhat ethereal drawings well suit Thompson's mystical Catholic philosophy; dramatically dark and fantastic, they show silent, veiled figures, great monolithic forms, star-lit skies streaming with light, figures diving through space or rising in swirling clouds, and horse-drawn chariots struggling skyward from thundering sea-storms.