A MEETING BY THE RIVER

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. Publisher's original dark blue cloth with gilt titles and decorative border to the upper board and spine, in dustwrapper. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the spine tips. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the slightly rubbed and nicked dustwrapper which has splits at the ends of the rear flap fold. Not price-clipped ($4.50 to the bottom right corner of the front flap).

Inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front free endpaper "For Bill / to remind him of the / time when we heard the / cry of a train, / with my best wishes, Christopher / July 19th 1967 / Silver Lake". The recipient is Dr William "Woods" Shelton Gray, Jr (1926-1993), Professor and the Chair of the English Department at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia specialising in modern English and American Literature. Educated in America and England he established correspondence and relationships with a number of English and American writers and poets, most notably T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden (who dedicated his poem "The Aliens" to him) and Tennessee Williams.