# Is "A Lume Spento" by Ezra Pound a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of A Lume Spento by Ezra Pound (Printed by A. Antonini, Venice, 1908) is identified by: Title page bears the imprint of A. The Venice 1908 printing is the true first and precedes all UK and US Pound publication — the census claim is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Title page bears the imprint of A. Antonini, Cannaregio 923, Venice, 1908, with the title-page verso noting publication 'in the city of Aldus'
- Pound paid for and supervised the printing himself, on paper left over from the press's recent history of the church
- Collation 2 leaves + 72 pages, about 21 cm; the verso of the dedication leaf and page 58 are blank
- Dedicated to the Philadelphia painter William Brooke Smith, 'Painter, Dreamer of dreams,' who had just died
- Original printed green to green-grey wrappers, largely uncut (dealers report the top edge trimmed and the others uncut); many surviving copies have been rebound or boxed and no longer have the wrappers — Christie's has catalogued a copy in later navy ribbed cloth with the original wrappers not preserved, so absence of wrappers does not by itself disqualify a copy
- No limitation is printed in the book
- Publisher imprint reads Printed by A. Antonini, Venice

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ezra Pound |
| Publisher | Printed by A. Antonini, Venice |
| Year | 1908 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | Title page bears the imprint of A. Antonini, Cannaregio 923, Venice, 1908, with the title-page verso noting publication 'in the city of… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Title page bears the imprint of A. Antonini, Cannaregio 923, Venice, 1908, with the title-page verso noting publication 'in the city of Aldus'; Pound paid for and supervised the printing himself, on paper left over from the press's recent history of the church. Collation 2 leaves + 72 pages, about 21 cm; the verso of the dedication leaf and page 58 are blank. Dedicated to the Philadelphia painter William Brooke Smith, 'Painter, Dreamer of dreams,' who had just died. Original printed green to green-grey wrappers, largely uncut (dealers report the top edge trimmed and the others uncut); many surviving copies have been rebound or boxed and no longer have the wrappers — Christie's has catalogued a copy in later navy ribbed cloth with the original wrappers not preserved, so absence of wrappers does not by itself disqualify a copy. No limitation is printed in the book. Gallup A1 records the misprints, which in many copies are corrected in Pound's own hand — an in-copy point worth checking. The Morgan Library copy carries an inserted printed slip ('With tapers quenched (A lume spento) / by Ezra Pound / Pub. A. Antonini Cannaregio, 923 Venice 1908') that Gallup does not record. LIMITATION IS DISPUTED and the page should say so: Gallup and most accounts give about 150 copies printed, while some dealer and institutional descriptions say 100. The figure is a bibliographic estimate, not a statement in the book; a census has located roughly 25 institutional holdings.

## Is this the true first?
The Venice 1908 printing is the true first and precedes all UK and US Pound publication — the census claim is confirmed. There is no original-language question: the poems are in English and only the title is Italian, so the Italian imprint is a printing fact, not a translation-precedence fact. Sequence worth stating precisely: A Lume Spento (Venice, 1908) is Pound's first book; A Quinzaine for This Yule followed later in 1908; Personae (Elkin Mathews, London, 1909) was his first regularly published book. Nothing precedes A Lume Spento.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue. The dominant trap is the New Directions (New York, 1965) 'A Lume Spento and Other Early Poems,' printed in roughly 6,500 copies, which reprints A Lume Spento together with A Quinzaine for This Yule plus previously unpublished early poems — and which includes facsimiles of the original 1908 title and dedication pages plus a bibliographic note, which is precisely what misleads a scanner or a hopeful owner. It runs 128 pages with an index, bound in blue cloth spine with patterned boards carrying a photographic image of San Trovaso, Venice on the front board, and was issued in a dust jacket. Three instant disqualifiers for the 1908 Venice printing: a title reading '...and Other Early Poems'; a cloth-and-boards binding rather than printed wrappers; a frontispiece portrait of Pound.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *A Lume Spento* by Ezra Pound a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/a-lume-spento
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.