POEMS 1962-1978

First edition, first printing. Original tan cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper which reproduces a detail from a pen and ink drawing by Botticelli. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Some spotting to the upper, and very lightly to the fore-edge of the page block. In the very near fine dustwrapper, a touch faded to the spine. Not price-clipped (£5.75 net to the front flap). A nice copy.

'Poems 1962-1978' draws upon Mahon's three early volumes published by Oxford University Press: 'Night-Crossing' (1968), 'Lives' (1972), and 'The Snow Party' (1975), as well as a number of previously unpublished poems. Like Yeats, Auden, Marianne Moore, and Robert Lowell before him, Mahon was an inveterate reviser and many of the poems here have been revised and re-titled for this selection.