First edition. Publisher's yellow cloth, in the original dustwrapper. The dedication copy, inscribed by Fuller for Laurie Lee on the front endpaper, "Dear Laurie, this book was your idea so you must carry the can for it, Love + gratitude, Roy". A very good copy in a very good dustwrapper, a little dusty with some closed tears.

Laurie Lee and Roy Fuller enjoyed an entertaining and generally friendly poetic rivalry.
The relationship got off to an unpromising beginning, when Roy Fuller reviewed Lee's second collection of poems on the Third Programme. The analysis, generally constructive, found certain passages "half-baked" and urged "Mr Lee to dare much more - dare to be complicated, dare to write of other things than nature, dare to use more verse forms, more rhyme - dare, perhaps, to write about the world as it impinges on us in 1948."
Lee wrote to Fuller, at least somewhat hurt, "In fact it made me laugh... I especially liked your 'half-baked' crack, though if you were here I'd ask you to come out into the back yard and repeat it... You dare me to eschew nature, I shall dare to be more natural. You dare me to be more complicated but I shall dare to achieve simplicity. I have no desire to cater for a brief unhappy fashion of intellectual confusion."
By the time of the publication of this volume, Fuller's collected poems, however, the friendship seems to have warmed. Writing to Fuller in advance of the book Lee said, "I could collect my lot on an ash tray. A bit envious I am... I never cut your throat much in the past, but you've certainly become my favourite poet now."

PROVENANCE: From the library of Laurie Lee (1914-1997).

Stock ID: 41584