From the Life and Songs of the Crow.
INSCRIBED TO HIS SON NICHOLAS
Crow From the Life and Songs of the Crow.
Faber & Faber, 1970.
First edition. Original black cloth in dustwrapper. Inscribed to his son Nicholas, with an original drawing of a crow by Hughes, to the front endpapers, "For Nick, the original of Crow Vs Cronos [drawing of a crow] & Bran Demon of the British Isles love from Dad, October 1970". The dustwrapper design is by Leonard Baskin. A fine copy in a fine dustwrapper.
A fine copy of Hughes's poetic masterpiece, inscribed to his son Nicholas. The inscription, like much of Hughes's work on Crow and on his variations on its theme, is bound up in the mythology of the crow.
Keith Sagar has noted that "Crow has a distinguished lineage in mythology. The God of healing known variously as Kronos, Saturn, Aesculapius and Apollo was a Crow-god. A Celtic name for him was Bran." (Keith Sagar, The Art Of Ted Hughes, Cambridge University Press). Hughes's notion of his son as "the original of Crow" opposed to these mythical versions, is explained in a 1970 radio interview where he says "The main story takes the Crow through a series of experiences which alter him in one way and another, take him to the bottom and then take him to the top, and eventually the whole purpose of the thing is to try to turn him into a man."
Later when Nicholas founded a private press in 1979, he named it the Morrigu Press, after Morrigu the mythical Irish goddess of war whose sign was the crow.
Stock ID: 37928
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