CROW WAKES Twelve Poems.

First edition, first printing. Limited edition of 200 copies. Association copy. Inscribed, lined, and dated to the author's brother Gerald and his wife Joan. Red and black patterned Elephant Hide paper-covered boards, quarter bound in cream-coloured Elephant Hide paper. Black lettering to spine and front panel. Laid "Glastonbury" endpapers (chain lines and watermarks visible). Issued without dustwrapper. Letterpress printed on Grosvenor Chater cream cartridge paper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean and unmarked. A lovely association copy.

Inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper, "For Gerald and Joan / love / Ted / August 1990 / 'The harvest of dregs is very great'". Gerald, Ted's older brother (by ten years) was an important figure for the poet, his childhood guide in their explorations of the West Yorkshire countryside. Gerald left school early, working in a variety of jobs before serving in the Royal Air Force during the war, following which he emigrated to Australia. In a 1997 letter, the poet remarks that Gerald, in his absence, "was the absent god in our family and my mother and I had a shared cult". Joan Whelan, Gerald's wife, was the daughter of the family that he first lodged with in Melbourne. Gerald outlived Ted by eighteen years, dying aged ninety-five in 2016. The mention of "dregs" in the poet's inscription (alluding to the production of usable yeast from sedimentary dregs during the brewing process) is a reference to the many additional Crow poems, some of which were added to later editions of the originary volume of 1970, with some (including eleven of the twelve printed in "Crow Wakes") published in satellite editions. ("The Contender" was included in both the expanded 1971 and the 1973 (Limited) editions of "Crow".) Sagar and Tabor include a quote from a letter sent to them by Alan Tarling (2nd November 1976) concerning the volume: "These poems were excluded for personal reasons from [Hughes'] 'Crow' opus and he offered them to me in March 1970. […] There were 200, a hundred each going to poet (TH) and printer (me) plus 30 review or academic copies. None of mine was signed […]. All the academic copies were gratis, and said as much in an extra colophon […] I don't know how TH's copies were distributed or whether or not they were signed". Sagar and Tabor note that "[c]opies numbered and signed by Hughes have been seen, and some of these contain manuscript corrections to the last lines of The Ship (page 22)". This copy is unnumbered and lacks amendments to the final lines of "The Ship". ('Letters of Ted Hughes', ed. Christopher Reid, London: 2007; Sagar and Tabor A28).