First illustrated edition. Original cream cloth with coloured illustration of two dancing cats to the upper cover, red titles to spine, in dustwrapper recreating cover image with black and red titles. Author's presentation copy, inscribed to his publisher and parents of the principle dedicatee on the front endpaper "For Geoffrey and Enid Faber these versified mewsings of Old Possum. T.S.Eliot". Illustrations by Nicolas Bentley. Fourteen full page colour illustrations as well as smaller black and white line drawings. A near fine copy with light foxing to the extremities, in a good only dustwrapper which is tanned to spine with chips to the spine ends a repaired tears.

An exceptional association copy, inscribed by Eliot to his long time publisher, colleague and friend Geoffrey Faber. Faber was the founding editor of Faber & Gwyer, which went on to become Faber & Faber, one of the great houses of British publishing. He had admired Eliot's early work, in particular The Waste Land and in early 1925 approached him to edit Faber's Quarterly Review. On the strength of this, Eliot gave up his job at Lloyds and became a full time writer. Eliot was quickly elected to the board and as poetry editor was instrumental in establishing Faber as the most important poetry publisher of the twentieth century. Faber also published all of Eliot's work in Britain from that point on.
It was not only a business relationship that they shared but a profound friendship: Eliot went on holiday with the Fabers virtually every year between 1933 and 1957, and was godfather to their first son, Tom.
Eliot would write whimsical letters to his young godson beginning with a humorous notice that "All Pollicle Dogs & Jellicle Cats to come to the birthday of Thomas Faber", giving birth to series of anthropological verse sent to Tom for his amusement and comment, which was eventually collected into Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
First published without illustration (beyond Eliot's own doodles to the jacket), this first illustrated edition was published a year after the first edition and Bentley's illustrations are supposed to have inspired Andrew Lloyd Weber's well-known musical and its various film adaptations.

Gallup A34a

Stock ID: 46607