FALLING AWAKE

First edition, first printing. Paperback original. Signed by the author. Publisher's original card wrappers, with French flaps. Dark blue endapapers. A fine copy, tight and square. Tiny bump to upper outer corners. Light toning to the paper-stock, the contents clean throughout. Correctly priced (£10.00) to the inside flap. A nice copy.

Inscribed by Alice Oswald in black ink to the half title, "To Richard / lovely to see you. / from Alice". The recipient is Dr Richard Rowland, scholar of Renaissance literature and a former lecturer at the universities of Oxford and York. Rowland, like Oswald, studied at New College, Oxford. "Falling Awake" was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes and the winner of both Costa and Griffin Poetry Prizes. "Orpheus and Tithonus appear at the beginning and end of this book, alive in an English landscape, stuck in the clockwork of their own speech, and the Hours – goddesses of the seasons and the natural apportioning of Time – are the presiding figures. The persistent conditions are flux and falling [...]" (from the jacket).