French Poets of the Twentieth Century Kastner 1927 First Edition Dust Jacket
 
Title & Bibliographic Details
Title: The French Poets of the Twentieth Century
Editor: Léon Émile Kastner
Publisher: J. M. Dent & Sons, London & Toronto
Printer: The Westminster Press
Date: 1927
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Original blue cloth with original dust jacket
Series: Dent literary anthology programme associated with the Collection Gallia range
 
Edition Statement
This volume is undated, as issued, but can be confidently identified as the 1927 first edition. The title is recorded as first published by J. M. Dent & Sons in 1927, and this example retains its original priced dust jacket (7s. 6d. net) together with early issue publisher advertisements consistent with that year. The printer’s imprint for The Westminster Press further supports identification as a first printing from the year of publication.
 
Historical & Literary Context
This important early twentieth-century anthology presents over two hundred poems by fifty contemporary French poets, offering English readers a rare early survey of modern French poetic movements including Symbolism, post-Symbolism, and emerging modernist voices.
Compiled during a period of intense Anglo-French literary exchange between the wars, the volume reflects British academic engagement with contemporary continental poetry at a formative moment in modern literary history.
Copies retaining their original dust jackets are increasingly difficult to locate.
 
About the Editor
Léon Émile Kastner (1869–1958) was Professor of French at the University of Manchester and a distinguished translator, editor, and scholar who helped introduce modern French literature to English-speaking audiences.
 
Binding & Exterior Condition
A very attractive survival in the original cream pictorial dust jacket, printed in blue and priced 7s. 6d. net, remaining unclipped and well preserved with only:
minor edge wear 
small tears 
light surface marking 
The original blue cloth binding beneath remains strong and clean with:
bright gilt lettering 
blind-stamped front-board emblem 
minimal edge wear 
light spine fading 
slight corner softening 
Overall, an unusually well-preserved example for the period.
 
Interior Condition
Internally the volume remains clean and well preserved.
Features include:
light natural toning 
occasional page-edge marks 
small closed tear to lower edge of page 101 
a few isolated areas of tanning 
An attractive illustrated Ex Libris plate with ownership inscription:
Ellen Jones
is present on the front free endpaper, with an additional faint institutional-style stamp partially overlying the plate.
No further ownership markings are present, and the binding remains firm throughout.
All 281 pages are present and complete.
 
Provenance
An illustrated Ex Libris plate for Ellen Jones appears on the front free endpaper, partially over-stamped by what may be a later institutional marking. This suggests early private ownership followed by possible later academic circulation.
 
Physical Details
Pagination: 281 pages
Dimensions: approx. 19 cm × 13.2 cm × 3.3 cm
Weight: approx. 495 g
 
Rarity & Collector Notes
This volume should be classified as:
Scarce and with dust jacket: Uncommon
because:
early modern French poetry anthologies had modest print runs 
academic readership survival rates were low 
dust jackets were rarely preserved 
Dent literary anthologies from the Collection Gallia context are increasingly collected 
Examples retaining original jackets appear only intermittently on the market.