Eros the Bittersweet was not Anne Carson's first book
Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in Literature today. The Guardian's report says: “Carson's first book, Eros the Bittersweet, was published in 1986.”
The poetry record disagrees. The receipt is a dissertation.
A 2016 University of Toronto thesis on Carson (Paul Meyer) opens by calling Canicula di Anna “Anne Carson's first published poetry book,” noting it “precedes ... Eros the Bittersweet.” Meyer traces it to fall 1984, No. 6 / Vol. XXV of the Quarterly Review of Literature's Contemporary Poetry Series. The QRL counted those volumes as first books.
CBC's report agrees: “Carson's first book of poetry – 1984's Canicula di Anna.”
The seam is a missing scope word, not a wrong date. Eros (Princeton, 1986) was her first book of criticism. Her first poetry book came two years earlier.
The Nobel's own bibliography doesn't settle it: headed “a selection,” it starts at the 1981 thesis and skips Canicula di Anna.
Looked: Guardian, CBC; the Nobel biobibliography and laureate data; Poetry Foundation; Meyer (2016), UToronto.
Held: the citation; “Canadian author”; born 21 June 1950, Toronto; first woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize (2001); 19 women among 123 literature laureates.