The Moment and Other Essays

First edition. Crown 8vo. Pp. 191, [1]. Publisher's burgundy cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; rough-cut lower edges. An exceptionally fresh copy, with the upper d/w panel illus. by Vanessa Bell and the d/w spine – both still bright pink, as the day the book was published – affixed to rear pastedown and free endpaper respectively. Editorial note by Leonard Woolf. Printed on war-time economy paper stock, and published on 5 December 1947 in an issue of 10,000 copies.

A collection of posthumously published literary criticism, biographical 'sketches', and essays, including 'On Being Ill' which first appeared in T.S. Eliot's New Criterion in January, 1926. It further includes, 'The Moment: Summer's Night,' Roger Fry, 'Notes on D.H. Lawrence,' 'The Art of Fiction' and 'The Leaning Tower'.

In his introductory editorial note to this follow-up volume to The Death of a Moth (1942), Leonard Woolf poignantly concludes: "I have printed these [essays] exactly as they were left, except for punctuation and the correction of obvious mistakes, but I have done so with some hesitation, if only because the hand-writing is occasionally extremely difficult to decipher".

[Kirkpatrick and Clarke A29a]