MOORTOWN ELEGIES

First edition, first printing. An edition of 175 numbered copies, signed by the author. Designed and printed by Will Carter at the Rampant Lions Press, Cambridge, on Barcham Green handmade paper. Six author's presentation copies and 26 further copies lettered A to Z were bound in full morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, and 143 numbered copies in full limp white goat vellum, blocked with Hughes' own drawing of a bull in gilt to the front panel, by Zaehnsdorf, London. This is no. 97 of the vellum copies, complete with the publisher's terracotta cloth slipcase. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. The vellum boards are (inevitably) a touch bowed, the gilt lettering on the spine rubbed. With the buff-coloured paper prospectus for the edition loosely laid in.

A sequence of 35 poems and passages from a verse journal about the author's experiences farming in Devon, completed in the summer of 1978. The poems were later printed as the first part of 'Moortown' (1979). Although unmarked as such, this copy is from the library of Frank Pike, drama editor at Faber and Faber and friend of the author. (Sagar and Tabor A57)