The Poet Assassinated (Illustrated Edition)

Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish-Belarusian descent. He is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, and one of the most impassioned defenders of Cubism and a forefather of Surrealism, both terms he is credited with coining. His play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917) is one of the earliest Surrealist literary works. He worked as a journalist and art critic for Le Matin, L'Intransigenat, Mercure de France and Paris Journal, amongst others, and in 1912 cofounded Les Soirees de Paris, an artistic and literary magazine. Two years after being wounded in WWI, Apollinaire died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 aged 38. Le poete assassiné (1916) is a collection of connected short stories which, in disguised form, tell Apolinaire's own story. Reprinted from an English translation with a biographical note of 1923 which includes four illustrations by André Derain and a portrait of the author by his friend André Rouveyre.