POETRY ANTHOLOGIES AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Oxford University Press, 1950. First edition. Inscribed and signed with forename by Ralph Currey on front free endpaper. Forty poems with an introduction and parallel text translations.
Crown 8vo (19cm). [ii],(xxii),(160)pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; endpapers slightly tanned, but very good in the original green dust-jacket – lettered in black and decorated in white – the jacket lightly rubbed.

£20

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London : [Maureen Duffy], 1960-1961. Seemingly a complete run of all three issues of this assertive poetry magazine – with contributions from Edwin Brock, Maureen Duffy herself, Bryan Johnson, Robert Milne, David Tipton, Frank Lissauer, Arnold Wesker, etc.
Three issues, each 16pp. Demy 8vo (22cm). The magazines bound, retaining the original wrappers, in a neat buckram, ruled and lettered in gilt; lightly sunned; slightly bowed; a few faint marks, but otherwise a very good copy.

£25

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Hatch End : Poet & Printer, 1983. First edition. An anthology of the forty best poems of 1982 – Alison Brackenbury, Humphrey Clucas, Anthony Cronin, Martyn Crucefix, Tom Disch, U. A. Fanthorpe, James Fenton, Peter Levi, George MacBeth, Derek Mahon, John Mole, Blake Morrison, Peter Redgrove, Vernon Scannell, Derek Walcott, etc. Loosely inserted is a signed, dated (1983) autograph note from the publisher, Alan Tarling.
Post 8vo (21cm). (72)pp. Original fawn wrappers, printed in two shades of brown; just slightly bruised at one corner, but a very good and clean copy, in the original mailing wrapper.

£20

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Oxford : Sycamore Press, 1990 [i.e. 1991]. First edition : limited to 250 copies. A collection of ten poems by John Fuller, Jane Griffiths, John Leonard, Bernard O’Donoghue, Mark Wormald and others. With a drawing by Christiania Whitehead.
Post 8vo (21cm). [16]pp. Original bright blue wrappers, lettered in black and decorated in white on upper wrapper; a very good copy indeed.

£15

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London : Chatto & Windus, (1986). First edition. An introductory collection of poems from Dominic Fisher, Alan Jenkins, Pippa Little, Lachlan MacKinnon, Peter McDonald, Jo Shapcott, and Adam Thorpe. This copy signed by Alan Jenkins, Jo Shapcott and Lachlan MacKinnon at the head of their contributions.
Post 8vo (20cm). (80)pp. Original wrappers – a design in yellow, black, white and grey; top edge faintly spotted; text just faintly tanned, but otherwise very good.

£20

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Cambridge : Pendulum Press, 1986. First edition. Selection of recent poetry from Oxford and Cambridge, with a preface by Peter Levi. Signed by Peter Levi. Contributors include John Adlam, Darius Guppy, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Charles Leftwich, John Wells, etc. Edited by John Adlam and Darius Guppy.
Foolscap 4to (22cm). [x],54pp. Original white wrappers, lettered and decorated in black; lightly tanned; a few spots, but a good copy.

£20

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Oxford : At the Clarendon Press, 1908. An early reprint of the original 1907 edition. Over 300 French poems, from Froissart and his contemporaries through to Verlaine, chosen, introduced, and furnished with notes by Lucas. “This new anthology of French poetry is, in its way, a perfect gem, reflecting the highest credit ... It is, without doubt, the most complete representation of poetry that has been placed before the English public” (Daily Telegraph) – “an ideal Christmas gift” (Manchester Courier).
Foolscap 8vo (163 x 100mm). (xxxvi),(492)pp. Bound in an elegant contemporary full calf prize binding for Merchant Taylors’ School; banded and gilt; school arms and the James Graves English Literature Prize legend on upper cover; marbled edges and matching endpapers; just a hint of rubbing; a handful of leaves at rear slightly creased (a production flaw), but otherwise a very good copy. Printed school presentation label made out in manuscript to J. D. Cowley laid in to front endpaper – this John Duncan Cowley (1897-1944), librarian, bibliographer, and squadron-leader killed by enemy action.

£125

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London : Nicholson & Watson, (1941). First edition. The first of Moore’s occasional wartime anthologies of new writing – with short stories by Kay Boyle, Gerald Kersh, Storm Jameson, Sidney Keyes, Marghanita Laski, William Saroyan, V. S. Pritchett, etc. – and poems from G. S. Fraser, David Gascoyne, Alun Lewis, Norman Nicholson, Anne Ridler, Alan Rook, Vernon Watkins and others. Edited by Moore (with assistance on the poetry from Tambimuttu).
Crown 8vo (19cm). (160)pp. Original pictorial wrappers by Hof; a touch shaken, but a very good copy in a lightly rubbed and slightly chipped dust-jacket – the Hof design repeated in full colour.

£20

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.London : Nicholson & Watson, [1942]. First edition. The second of Moore’s occasional wartime anthologies of new writing – with short stories by Elizabeth Bowen (The Demon Lover), Rhys Davies, Gwyn Jones, Gerald Kersh, Howard Spring, etc. – and poems (selected and introduced by Henry Treece) from Alex Comfort, J. F. Hendry, Robert Herring, Emanuel Litvinoff, Norman Nicholson, Herbert Read, Anne Ridler and others.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (160)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in black; very slight fading of extremities, but a very good copy in a slightly worn dust-jacket, just slightly defective at head of spine.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, 1928. First edition. Includes the first appearance in book form of poems by Conrad Aiken, Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Austin Clarke, W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, Thomas Hardy, Edwin Muir, Dorothy Parker, Siegfried Sassoon, etc. With decorations by John Austen.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xvi),(112)pp. Original cloth; white spine label lettered in black; endpapers tanned, but a very good and bright copy in the original John Austen dust-jacket – price-clipped and a little marked and worn.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, 1929. First edition. Includes the first appearance in book form of poems by A.E., Edmund Blunden, W. H. Davies, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, Edwin Muir, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Siegfried Sassoon, etc. With decorations by John Austen.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xiv,128pp. Original deep pink cloth; white spine label lettered in black; a few spots; endpapers tanned, but a very good copy in the original John Austen dust-jacket – a design in cream, pink and black – slightly worn, lightly chipped and a little tanned.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1931). First edition. Includes the first appearance in book form of poems by “A. E.”, Conrad Aiken, Edmund Blunden, W. H. Davies, Edwin Muir, Robert Nichols, Dorothy Parker, L. A. G. Strong, etc. With decorations by Elizabeth Montgomery.
Crown 8vo (20cm). xiv,106pp. Original green cloth, white spine label lettered in black; endpapers slightly tanned, but a very good copy in the original Elizabeth Montgomery dust-jacket – a design in cream, red and black – a little fingered and slightly chipped. Contemporary inscription to P. M. Freiston from W. M. G., with an associated book-label.

£20

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1933). First edition. Over seventy poems, including the first appearance in book form of work by Conrad Aiken, A. E. Coppard, Walter de la Mare, Stella Gibbons, Laurence Housman, Edwin Muir, Robert Nichols, Carl Sandburg, Siegfried Sassoon, L. A. G. Strong, etc. With decorations by Elizabeth Montgomery.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (128)pp. Original blue and beige diagonal cloth, white spine label lettered in black; some spotting, mainly of edges, but a very good copy in the original Montgomery dust-jacket - a design in cream, red and black - the jacket price-clipped, lightly tanned and with some short tears neatly repaired. Small bookshop label (W. Mark & Co. of Northampton) on front pastedown.

£25

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London : Jonathan Cape, (1938). First edition. Includes the first appearance in book form of poems by Edmund Blunden, W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, J. C. Hall, Donagh McDonagh, Edwin Muir, William Soutar, William Carlos Williams, Sheila Wingfield, etc. With decorations by Hans Aufseeser.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (128)pp. Original canvas, blocked in green on upper cover; white spine label, lettered in black; a very good copy in the original Aufseeser dust-jacket – a design in black, yellow and white – with one very short tear to upper panel, but also very good.

£20

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : one of the 2,000 copies of the first impression, with the roman rather than gothic half-title, just four notes on p.323, etc. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo. [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in a smart recent half crimson morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth gilt (the priced, earliest variant) at rear; a handful of spots, a small flaw to the final leaf, but a very good copy. Contemporary ownership inscription on title-page and some neat pencil markings to margins in places.

£400

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Cambridge : Macmillan & Co., 1861. First edition : mixed issue – with the four (rather than six) notes on p.323, obviously indicating the earlier printing, but with the gothic (rather than plain) half-title. The original appearance of a perennial favourite – close on 300 of the finest poems in the language from seventy-five or so poets – from Sir Thomas Wyatt, Marlowe and Shakespeare, to Shelley and Keats. With a preface and some extensive notes by Palgrave.
Foolscap 8vo (162 x 103mm). [4],[viii],332pp. Engraved vignette by Charles Henry Jeens (1827-1879) after Thomas Woolner (1825-1892). Bound in an elegant recent half green morocco, banded and gilt – retaining the original cloth spine and upper panel (by Burn) at rear (the Carter “C” unpriced variant, although Carter makes a case of probability not certainty for the ordering of the variants); contrasting label (erroneously lettered “The Golden Treasures”); marbled sides; some occasional light spotting, but overall a very good copy. Contemporary (1862) pencilled ownership inscription of Marion Campbell of Edinburgh. The tickets of both Burn and the Edinburgh bookseller William Pattison Kennedy (1804?-1877) neatly reinserted.

£400

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, (1938). First edition : the first issue, printed on slightly thicker stock and in the primary binding of yellow cloth. An engaging anthology – E. C. Bentley, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and many more – compiled and edited by Denys Kilham Roberts. Illustrated with some arresting images by Victor Reinganum.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xx),(260)pp. Original yellow cloth, blocked and lettered in dark red; some very faint spotting to covers and edges, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the yellow, brown and black Reinganum jacket – a little sunned, lightly rubbed and with a few slight nicks.

£40

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London : John Lane, The Bodley Head, (1938). First edition : the second issue, printed on thinner stock and in the secondary binding of grey cloth. An engaging anthology – E. C. Bentley, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and many more – compiled and edited by Denys Kilham Roberts. Illustrated with some arresting images by Victor Reinganum.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (xx),(260)pp. Original grey cloth, blocked and lettered in dark red; some very faint spotting to covers and edges, but otherwise a very good and bright copy in the yellow, brown and black Reinganum jacket – price-clipped, a little chipped at head, and with some minor repairs and reinforcement.

£20

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London : Fortune Press, (1951 [i.e. 1952]). First edition. With poems from Peter Bell (2), Elizabeth Jennings (3), Derwent May (2), Robert Robinson (3), Peter Dale Scott (2), Martin Seymour-Smith (4), George Steiner (2), Lotte Zurndorfer (2) and many others.
Crown 8vo (20cm). [ii],62pp. Original red-brown cloth, lettered up spine in gilt; spine sunned at tips; a little shaken, but otherwise a very good copy in the original green and cream dust-jacket – price-clipped and a little worn, frayed and chipped. D’Arch Smith 41.

£20

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1971. First edition. Twenty-three poets aged under thirty-five — a fine anthology with biographical notes and some captivating period portrait photographs. Contributors include Stewart Conn (5 poems), Kevin Crossley-Holland (3), Peter Dale (4), Douglas Dunn (5), John Fuller (4), Ian Hamilton (4), Tony Harrison (4), a Beatle-cropped Seamus Heaney (5), Brian Jones (4), Angela Langfield (3), Michael Longley (4), Derek Mahon (5), Dom Moraes (5), Brian Patten (3), Jeremy Robson himself (4), Jon Stallworthy (5), Hugo Williams (4), and half a dozen others.
Post 8vo (22cm). 156pp. Plates. Portraits. Original violet boards, lettered in gilt; a couple of slight marks, but a very good copy in the pictorial dust-jacket — the jacket with a couple of short repaired tears at head, and another on the inside flap, but clean and complete and with only very minor further wear.

£25

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London : Poetry Book Society, 1985. First edition. Signed by Carol Rumens on the title-page. A Poetry Book Society anthology – with poems by Patricia Beer, Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, D. J. Enright, U. A. Fanthorpe, Michael Longley, Anne Stevenson, George Szirtes, etc.
Post 8vo (20cm). [iv],58,[ii]pp. Original colour printed wrappers, lettered in deep pink and with a design by Carol Brickley; a very good copy.

£20

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London : Frank Cass & Co., (1970). A facsimile reprint of the complete run of all ten issues of the influential quarterly originally published between 1917 and 1920. With contributions from Richard Aldington, T. S. Eliot, Ronald Firbank, Stephen Hudson, Ford Madox Hueffer, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Herbert Read, Dorothy M. Richardson, Isaac Rosenberg, Frank Rutter, Siegfried Sassoon, Walter Sickert, Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, etc. – as well as illustrations by H. Gaudier-Brzeska, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Nina Hamnett, E. McKnight Kauffer, Wyndham Lewis, John Nash, Paul Nash, C. R. W. Nevinson, Lucien Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Edward Wadsworth, and others. Frank Cass Library of English Little Magazines No. 16, edited by B. C. Bloomfield.
Two volumes. Crown 4to (26cm). Irregular pagination. Illustrations, many full-page. Original cloth; slight marking to foot of boards and light fading to fore-edges, but otherwise very good.

£50

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London : Christopher Sandford at the Golden Cockerel Press, 1946. First edition : one of 750 numbered copies. A rousing anthology of verse and prose – from Shakespeare to Churchill, from the well-known to the obscure – extolling the spirit of Britain at war, Britain at sea, and Britain in the air. Over sixty pieces, including both Wellington and Thackeray on Waterloo, Instructions to Captain Cook, Nelson’s Prayer before Trafalgar, etc. Illustrated with wood-engravings (made on active service) by John O’Connor (1913-2004), and with an introduction by Dorothy Rutter (1892-1961).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [iv],150,[vi]pp. Eleven wood-engravings. Original buckram-backed decorative boards; top edge gilt; a very good copy.

£100

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London : Fortune Press, [1953]. First edition. An Oxford anthology – with eight poems from Donald Hall, nine from Elizabeth Jennings, seven from Simon Broadbent, and others from Gillian Graig (4), Jenny Joseph (1), Derwent May (6), Peter Dale Scott (3), Michael Shanks (2) and Paul West (6).
Crown 8vo (20cm). (64)pp. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; a little bowed; endpapers a little tanned, but otherwise very good in the original dust-jacket – a typographic design in cerise on grey – just lightly rubbed and slightly tanned.

£20

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London : Hutchinson, (1991). First edition. With new poems from James Berry, Eavan Boland, Maura Dooley, Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Seamus Heaney, John Heath-Stubbs, Norman MacCaig, Peter Redgrove, Jon Silkin, George Szirtes, Charles Tomlinson, etc.
Post 8vo (20cm). [x],86pp. Original wrappers – a design in blue, red, green and black; faint crease to lower wrapper, but otherwise very good.

£20

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London : Poetry, 1939. The first issue of this legendary magazine, originally called simply “Poetry”, the first series of which ran until 1951. This copy signed next to their contributions by nine of the original contributors – Audrey Beecham, Dorian Cooke, Walter de la Mare, Lawrence Durrell (twice), Clifford Dyment, Philip O’Connor, Herbert Read, Edwin Smith and Stephen Spender (twice). Other contributors to a highly impressive first issue include George Barker, Gavin Ewart, John Gawsworth, J. F. Hendry, Rayner Heppenstall, Louis Macneice, Nicholas Moore, Keidrych Rhys, Tambimuttu himself, Dylan Thomas and Laurence Whistler.
Crown 4to (25cm). [32]pp. Photograph by Edwin Smith. Three wood engravings by Diana Gardner. Original stapled wrappers, with a design in red and black by Hector Whistler; some mild spotting, mainly to wrappers; just a hint of wear and a touch of rusting to staples, but overall a very good copy of a highly evocative survival.

£250

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Bailrigg, Lancaster : Continuum, [1971]. First edition. An anthology which commences pugnaciously with a quotation from Ho Chi Minh — “the poet also should know how to lead an attack”. The opening editorial continues on the theme of dark mills, cramped houses, capitalist exploitation, dark and satanic schools, and even universities — “slave markets for the technocrats” — and “places where humanity is denied, where the potential for love, creativity and joy is suppressed for the sake of profit”. Northern chippiness aside, a very good anthology, with poems from Anne Cluysenaar, Tony Connor, Henry Graham (2), Adrian Henri (2), David Jaffin (2), George Macbeth, Hugh MacDiarmid, Barry MacSweeney, Wes Magee (3), Adrian Mitchell, Pete Morgan (2), Jeff Nuttall, Brian Patten (3), John Pudney (3), Graham Taylor himself (4), and around twenty others.
Crown 4to (25cm). 32pp. Original stapled wrappers — an atmospheric photograph by Bernard Jeffries — a little rubbed, bruised and creased; slight rusting to staples, but a serviceable copy of an uncommon booklet, with just five copies located worldwide in institutional collections, just two in the UK — Liverpool and UCL.

£25

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London : Poetry Book Society, 1979. First edition. An absorbing collection of short essays by poets, mainly on their own work, from the Society’s Bulletin. Contributors include George Barker, John Betjeman, Edmund Blunden, Charles Causley, Austin Clarke, Douglas Dunn, T. S. Eliot, D. J. Enright, Roy Fuller, Robert Graves, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes (on Sylvia Plath), David Jones, Philip Larkin, Louis MacNeice, Edwin Morgan, Peter Redgrove, Theodore Roethke, R. S. Thomas, Charles Tomlinson, Vernon Watkins, etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). (72)pp. Original tan cloth, lettered in gilt; very faint spotting of top edge, but a very good and bright copy in the original dust-jacket – red and brown on pale grey – just very faintly spotted and slightly nicked on lower panel.

£20

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