THANK YOU, FOG

First edition, first printing. Original quarter blue cloth over pale blue paper-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the dustwrapper, fine except for a previous owner's tiny ink dots beside the titles of eight earlier books listed on the rear flap. A very nice copy.

"When Auden died, on 29th September 1973, he had already collected the poems in this book, had decided its title, and had given it its dedication. Had he lived he would presumably have added more poems before publishing it. In place of the unwritten poems, the book includes Auden's last work for the stage, 'The Entertainment of the Senses', an antimasque written in collaboration with Chester Kallman. The shorter poems in the book are principally those that Auden completed after leaving New York in the Spring of 1972 to return to his native England. Two earlier lyrics, which Auden also planned to include, are from an unfinished musical version of 'Don Quixote' which was commissioned from Auden and Kallman in 1963" (from the jacket).