THOSE MARVELOUS LUNCHES. A New Year's Greeting From Black Sparrow Press.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. One of 26 copies. Hand bound in white paper-covered boards, decorated in bronze and silver, with titles in black to the upper board. A fine copy, the binding square and tight, bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owners' marks.

Issued in an edition of 26 copies (from a total edition of 226) for friends of the publisher, from which this example is lettered 'G' and signed by Charles Bukowski in black ink on the colophon. Bukowski's long-lasting relationship with Black Sparrow Press began in March 1966, when founder John Martin appeared at his front door asking if he had any poems he could see. At the time, Bukowski was working for the post office and submitting poems to Jon and Louise 'Gypsy Lou' Webb for their magazine The Outsider, where Martin first encountered his work, but had not received consistent royalties for his publications. Martin was in the process of setting up the Press when he sought to meet the poet, whom he considered "the new Walt Whitman", and selected four poems from a mountain of unpublished work that were suitable to release as broadsides. As such, the poems 'True Story', 'On Going Out to Get the Mail', 'To Kiss the Worms Goodnight' and 'The Girls' were included in the first four publications of Black Sparrow Press from April - July 1966, in a limited print run of 30 copies each. In 1969, Bukowski accepted a salary of $100 per month to quit his job and write for the Press full-time, and in so doing, launched decades of collaboration, financial security and success, and initiated a long friendship between the two men. (Krumhansl 133; Barry, Miles: Charles Bukowski, 2005, pp.145-151).