SOME POEMS FOR FRIENDS OF STEPHEN TENNANT

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Inscribed presentation copy from Stephen Tennant to Violet Bonham-Carter. Publisher's stapled cream card covers with an illustration by Stephen Tennant printed in brown to the upper cover. A very good copy, the binding firm, the covers dust marked. The contents, with inscriptions and emendations by the author, are otherwise clean throughout. Scarce.

Inscribed by Stephen Tennant in blue ink on the upper cover "For Darling Violet - from S. Spring 1963 / "Not for the idle comment, / things like these -". Further inscribed on the title page "These Poems will lie in Your / Book, darling Violet - / Plato's Ancestor, Solon - - / February 1963 / "The Soul of a / wheel, is the space / between the spokes / Chinese lore / neat anecdote", and inside of the upper cover "Know thyself, / a sage". There is one emendation in the author's hand "Where" for 'When' in his poem Autumn Rhapsody (page 12), the printed dedication reads 'For Violet'. The recipient, Violet Bonham-Carter (Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury), was a lifelong friend of Tennant's former lover, Siegfried Sassoon, and was also related to Tennant by marriage.