CROW:

London: Faber and Faber. 2015. First printing of this Faber Members Collector's Edition. First printing of this Faber Members Collector's Edition. Original quarter terracotta cloth over paper-covered boards. Lettered in gilt to the spine. Boards and endpapers with a design by Leonard Baskin. Bound-in ribbon bookmark. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Printed by Smith Settle, West Yorkshire on premium wood-free paper using a traditional lithographic method on a small Heidelberg press. Sewn and bound by hand. A deluxe limited edition produced for Faber members. The poems collected in 'Crow' were mostly written between 1966 and 1969, following a fallow period after the death of Sylvia Plath. In a letter to Leonard Baskin, whose artwork graced the original jacket and this new edition, Hughes described the book as his masterpiece. It was Baskin's drawings of crows that had prompted Hughes to write the sequence (centred around the central character/symbol of Crow). The book was reissued with seven extra poems in 1972, with a further three being added to the limited edition published in 1973. The poet Peter Porter wrote at the time that "English poetry has found a new hero and nobody will be able to read or write verse now without the black shape of Crow falling across the page". Further details and images for any of the items listed are available on request. Lucius Books welcomes direct contact with our customers.