From the Life and Songs of the Crow.
INSCRIBED WITH A DRAWING
Crow From the Life and Songs of the Crow.
Faber, 1970.
First edition. Original black cloth in dustwrapper. Author's presentation copy to his aunt Hilda Farrar, inscribed on the front free endpaper "To Hilda with lots of love from Ted 2nd Oct. 1970", with a large drawing of a crow atop a bleak mountain at night. The dustwrapper design is by Leonard Baskin. A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper with a touch of tanning to the spine.
The inscription precedes the book's publication on the 12 October 1970. Mostly written between 1966 and 1969, following a barren period after the suicide of Sylvia Plath, Crow marked a literary shift for Hughes, where he abandoned many of his previous poetic devices. Hughes would later describe the work as his masterpiece.
Ted Hughes grew up as part of a close and supportive family in Mytholmroyd. His mother, Edith's, large family all lived near by, with her sister Hilda only a few doors down from the Hughes family home on Aspinall Street.
"Crossley [a childhood friend] remembers Ted's very close relationship with his aunt Hilda, which endured throughout Hughes's life; in the aftermath of Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963, Hilda played a key role supporting Hughes in looking after his children Nicholas and Frieda, and became a frequent visitor to Ted and his second wife Carol at their Devon home. This closeness is further demonstrated by the fact that when Hughes visited the Upper Calder Valley in adulthood, he would usually stay with Hilda... almost a 'second mother' to him." - Steve Ely (Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire)
Stock ID: 39100
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