The Young Man in April
1913.
Autograph manuscript of Brooke's poem "The Young Man in April". A single quarto page. Two stanzas each of eight lines, signed by Brooke at the base. Trimmed to the upper edge, slightly spotted, very good. With a photogravure bust portrait of the poet with printed facsimile signature below, dated 1914
The Young Man in April was first published in The Cambridge Review, for May 1, 1913. The text here agrees with the text printed in Keynes' edition of Poems (1952), with two minor variations at lines 5 and 7 (line 7 is here as it appeared in its first printing in The Cambridge Review).
This poem was written during the turmoil when he was overwhelmed by his complicated personal life, being romantically involved with Phyllis Gardner, Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, as well as the actress Cathleen Nesbitt. He opted to escape the situation and set sail for America. "It would take him nearly three months to actually get on the ship, but there was no tie strong enough to keep him in England. Cathleen, lovely as she was, belonged in that 'not enough' category. To convince himself of this Rupert wrote a cynical little poem, 'The Young Man in April'" (Paul Delany, Fatal Glamour: The Life of Rupert Brooke, 2015, pp. 220-21).
Manuscript poems by Brooke are of the utmost scarcity and virtually unobtainable in commerce. Since a small cache of material from the estate of Brooke's friend Dudley Ward appeared in 1979, just two poems have appeared at auction, both written as postcards.
Stock ID: 45471
£30,000.00
