GAUDETE

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy from the author to his close friend, poet and translator János Csokits. Original black cloth with titles in gilt and red to the spine, in dustwrapper. A lovely fine copy, the binding clean and square, the contents without previous owner's inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the near fine lightly rubbed and nicked original dustwrapper. Not price-clipped (£4.50 to the front flap).

Inscribed by the author in black ink on the front free endpaper "For my dear friend Janos / with much love / from Ted / 26th August 1977". An excellent association copy. Hungarian poet and translator János Csokits became acquainted with the author after meeting Olwyn Hughes, Ted's sister in Paris. He is perhaps best known as Ted Hughes's co-translator of another 20th-century Hungarian poet, János Pilinszky. In 1992 Csokits published Pilinszky Nyugaton (Pilinszky in the West), collecting all of Hughes's letters to him. The entire Csokits-Hughes correspondence is now held by Emory University, Atlanta.