Boni and Liveright, New York. 1922, 1922. First edition. First issue, with the word ''shit'' intact in the last line of page 219. In later issues the word was blocked out. The author's first book and one of the cornerstones of First World War literature.Cummings's first separately published book, the account of his war-time incarceration by the French. An auspicious debut, andone of the lasting books to come out of World War I. Much admired by many of Cummings' contemporaries, including T.E. Lawrence, who wrote the prefacefor the English edition. Richard Kennedy, Cummings' biographer, estimates that the entire first edition consisted of fewer than 2,000 copies.


E.E. CUMMINGS, born Oct. 14, 1894 , Cambridge, Massachusetts. Entered Harvard College in 1911, specializing in Greek and other languages, and contributed poems to Harvard periodicals. While at Harvard he formed lasting friendships with a number of artists and writers, including John Dos Passos and Robert Hillyer. In 1915 Cummings graduated magna cum laude, and delivered the commencement address on "The New Art." In 1916 he receives an MA from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. During 1917 he lived for a time in New York, with the painter Arthur Wilson, and worked for P. F. Collier & Son. When war was declared in April, Cummings joined the Norton-Haries Ambulance Corps, and sails for France on the La Touraine, where he met another Harjes-Norton recruit, William Slater Brown. After several weeks in Paris, Cummings & Brown were assigned to ambulance duty on Noyon sector. However, in September, due to the suspicions of a French army censor who found Brown's letters home seditious, Brown & Cummings were arrested, and when Cummings refused to dissociate himself from his friend, both young men were sent to a concentration camp at La Ferte Mace. Cummings was released in December. By the first of the year (1918), Cummings was back in New York. During the summer he was drafted, and was stationed at Camp Devens until his discharge, shortly after the Armistice. . He remained in New York through 1920, marrying, working at his painting, and becoming associated with the writers at The Dial, including Marianne Moore, Kenneth Burke & Edmund Wilson. In September of 1920, he began work on his first book, a novel, based on his experiences in the French prison camp, The Enormous Room. During the next year he traveled to Portugal and Spain with Dos Passos, then to Paris, which served as his home base for the next couple years. During this period he formed friendships with Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, John Peale Bishop, Lewis Galantiere, Gorham Munson, Malcolm Cowley & Archibald MacLeish.. The Enormous Room appeared in 1922, published in a mutilalated version by Boni and Liveright, New York.