OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS

First edition with these illustrations. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the illustrated dustwrapper. With drawings throughout by Edward Gorey. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the fine, bright dustwrapper, the merest rubbing to spine tips and corners. Not price-clipped (£4.95 net to the front flap). A very nice copy of the uncommon first UK printing.

It was perhaps inevitable that Edward Gorey (1925-2000) would turn his hand to Eliot's popular sequence of poems. A lifelong cat-lover ('Dancing Cats and Neglected Murderesses' appeared two years before this volume), he left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust for cats and dogs. Gorey's eerily beautiful drawings are characteristically darker and more austere than the better-known Nicholas Bentley illustrations.