COHEN, Leonard. Book of Longing (Signed first edition)

London: Viking, 2006. First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. pp. 231. Signed by the author on the title page. Publisher’s illustrated boards, issued without dust-jacket as published. Illustrated throughout with the author’s own drawings, several in colour. A very good copy.

A fine signed first edition of Leonard Cohen’s final major collection of poetry. Published after a gap of more than twenty years since Stranger Music, the work draws together over 160 poems, prose meditations and original illustrations composed over two decades, including the years Cohen spent living at the Mount Baldy Zen Center in California. The volume offers an intimate portrait of the writer at a mature stage of his life, balancing spirituality with sensuality, melancholy with humour, and simplicity with philosophical depth.

While celebrated internationally as a singer-songwriter, Cohen consistently regarded poetry as the foundation of his creative life. Book of Longing revisits the enduring themes of his work—love, faith, longing, ageing and mortality—in a voice that is at once reflective, lyrical and unmistakably his own. The inclusion of his original drawings, reproduced throughout the text, gives the volume the character of a private journal and distinguishes it from his earlier published collections.

Published shortly before Cohen’s acclaimed return to the concert stage, Book of Longing is now recognised as one of the most important literary achievements of his later career. Signed copies have become increasingly scarce since his death in 2016 and remain highly sought after by collectors of modern poetry, first editions and literary manuscripts.

Book of Longing (2006) is a deeply personal collection of poetry and artwork by Leonard Cohen, blending his characteristic wit, spirituality, and contemplations on love, desire, and mortality. The collection was written during a transformative period of his life, much of it while he lived in seclusion at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy, California. Cohen’s time spent in monastic practice is evident throughout the work, as themes of meditation, solitude, and the quest for inner peace recur frequently.

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