TENDER ONLY TO ONE: Poems and Drawings.

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy, with the author's holograph correction to p. 32. Original blue cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the dustwrapper illustrated by the author. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean. There is a small breach between page gatherings (at pp. 30-31) which doesn't, however, affect the binding (which remains strong). Upper edges coloured blue, fore- and lower edges untrimmed (the fore-edge a little toned). A previous owner has, in addition to his bookplate affixed to the front pastedown, glued in two newspaper cuttings both featuring poems by Stevie Smith (dated 1962 and 1992) to rear endpaper and pastedown. In the lightly soiled dustwrapper, rubbed and nicked to edges and extremities. Not price-clipped (5s. net to the front flap).

Inscribed by the author in blue ink to the front free endpaper, "To Anna / with love / from / Stevie / Christmas 1951". The recipient is Anna "Niouta" Kallin (1896-1984), born in Moscow (for a while mistress to Oskar Kokoschka) and later a producer of arts programmes at the BBC, where she had a close working relationship with Stevie Smith. To the verso of the endpaper, Smith has added, "Author's correction / p. 32". This page features the poem 'Mother, among the Dustbins' which, in the same hand and ink, deletes the words "what lies" in line 11. The deleted words (clearly a printing error, the same two words following in the same line) do not appear in later printings of the poem. In her biography of the author, Frances Spalding notes that 'Tender Only to One', though "characterised by Stevie's insidious wit and guileful craft, brings to the fore her obsession with death. There is death on the road, in dreams, an accidental murder; a parrot waits for death, a patient yearns for it". Most of the poems are complemented by one of the author's witty, haunting, line drawings. (Frances Spalding, 'Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography' [London, 1988]).