OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS

First edition with these illustrations. Publisher's original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the illustrated dustwrapper. With black and white line drawings throughout by Edward Gorey. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout, and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the lightly rubbed dustwrapper, which is without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped (£4.95 net to the front flap). An excellent copy of the uncommon first UK printing.

It was perhaps inevitable that Edward Gorey (1925-2000) would turn his hand to Eliot's popular sequence of poems. A lifelong cat-lover ('Dancing Cats and Neglected Murderesses' appeared two years before this volume), he left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust for cats and dogs. Gorey's eerily beautiful drawings are characteristically darker and more austere than the better-known Nicholas Bentley illustrations.