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Blue wrappers. Spine very slightly faded, corner of lower cover very mildly creased. Edition limited to 70 numbered copies. A spirited defence of Guillaume Apollinaire (né Wilhelm Albert Wlodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, 1880-1918), whom a contributor had casually disparaged, noting (among other things) that he had "served a sentence in gaol for theft". Not at all so, writes Vincent O'Sullivan, itemising the circumstances of his detention after an acquaintance had walked off with some sculptures at the Louvre (this at a time when the Mona Lisa had just been stolen). Apollinaire "was one of those characters around whom legends gather. He was a man of large humanity, kind-hearted and understanding beyond words; sincere too in all the offices of life . . . It may have been, very likely was, an aftermath of this affair, an attempt to wipe out the ignominy and all the insinuations and sly back looks upon it, that when the war broke out in 1914 he hastened to offer his service in France, and indeed gave his life, for it was the effect of his wound that killed him." O'Sullivan's letter first appeared in The Dublin Magazine for January-March 1936. Seller Inventory # TR100011
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