THE SPANISH-ITALIAN BORDER

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Inscribed presentation copy. Hardcover issue. Publisher's original black cloth with titles in silver to the spine, in dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, with a touch of rubbing to the extremities and otherwise bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout. Complete with the fine original dustwrapper, that is without fading, loss or tears.

Inscribed by the author in blue ink to the title page "To Frank / With all my love / Roisin xx". This copy is from the library of Frank Pike, editor at Faber and Faber, who over four decades, from the 1960s, onwards was responsible for the Faber drama list, recruiting Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray, Brian Friel, Sam Shepard, and Alan Bennett, among others, as well as working closely with authors already publishing with the firm, notably Samuel Beckett. The Dublin born poet Roisin Tierney's first full-length poetry collection, after first winning the prestigious Michael Marks Award in 2012 with her pamphlet 'Dream Endings' (Rack Press in 2011). The collection comprises 49 poems, divided into two parts, with 'Dream Endings' closing the text. In an interview with the publisher, Tierney explained that it gave the book a better structure to keep the rural Irish, biographical poems to the first part, and the Spanish-themed poems to the second. She was greatly influenced by Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, Paddy Bushe, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Antonio Machado, among others. Tierney went on to explain that the title and the title poem came from a friend and co-poet, Simon Barraclough, when he jokingly suggested that they set up a writing residence. Barraclough pitched Italy, while Tierney was keen to move to Spain, so he declared "We'll get a house on the Spanish-Italian border...!" (Arc, 2014).