The World's Tragedy.
Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 1991. Collector's Limited Edition. Hardcover, Octavo, xl + 114 pp. Brown cloth with gilt title, etc. to spine and front cover. Includes a foreword by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D., and Lon Milo Duquette not in the 1985 Falcon Press publication. "The World's Tragedy" was originally privately printed in Paris in 1910 in an edition of 100 copies, but most copies of this play were destroyed in a customs seizure or seizures, on account of the frank discussion of homosexuality in Crowley's autobiographical Preface. The play itself was a work which Crowley particularly valued, writing in his "Confessions" that "This is beyond all question the high-water mark of my imagination, my metrical fluency, my wealth of expression, and my power of bringing together the most incongruous ideas so as to enrich my matter to the utmost. At the same time, I succeeded in reaching the greatest height of spiritual enthusiasm, human indignation, and demoniac satire." Regardie writes: "This long, almost epic poem/play is one of the most bitter and vicious diatribes against Christianity that I have ever read. Especially the preface written by Crowley also. Crowley's hatred of Christianity was not a blind unreasoned prejudicial emotion. It was indelibly rooted in his own personal experience, amplified and added to by extensive study and research all throughout his adult years." The words 'Collector's Limited Edition,' are gilt stamped on the front cover, but otherwise there is no other information concerning a possible limitation (some copies seen also had a limitation stamp on the title page). Spine ends lightly bumped - otherwise a lovely copy in near Fine condition. (Issued without dustjacket). Item #45102
ISBN: 1561840475
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