ABSTRACT
The first commercial edition of Cavafy's poetry appeared only in 1935, two years after his death; self-publication had been Cavafy's chosen means of disseminating his work. Many Greek poets, George Seferis among them, began with self-publication but were glad to find commercial publishers as soon as their work began to be known. Cavafy, though, never moved in that direction. And unlike Seferis' self-published volumes, Cavafy's were never placed in bookshops, indeed were never offered for sale at all. After his meeting with George Tsokopoulos in Athens in 1901, Cavafy ruefully reported in the journal of his summer trip to Greece with his brother Alexander, that 'At 3 pm. Tsocopoulo called Stayed with him till 3.40. Talked mostly about literature, and the enormous difficulty met by authors to make an edition sell. Tsocopoulo says that it is considered quite an achievement to have been able to publish a volume and realise not profit, but no loss from it.
