First edition. Blue cloth in printed dustwrapper. Author's presentation copy, inscribed to his favourite uncle on the title page, "For Uncle Walt, with all my best, Ted.". A near fine copy, with some foxing to the preliminary leaves and page edges, in a good dustwrapper, which is also foxed with wear to the spine ends and corners.

The author's first book. Ted Hughes grew up as part of a close and supportive family in Mytholmroyd. Most of the family worked in the farming and woollen industries. His uncles, Thomas and Walter, had established themselves as prominent local businessmen and owned a clothing factory, just round the corner from the Hughes' family home on Aspinall Street.
"Hughes was also close to his uncles Walter and Thomas, especially the former, the relationship between the two being characterized by Crossley [a childhood friend] and John Farrar as developing into something akin to a father/son relationship..." - Steve Ely (Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire)
Walter encouraged Ted's early interest in nature and animals, which was to manifest itself so profoundly in his poetry. He would take him and his brother Gerald on excursions on the moors.
"Ted remembered one particular expedition to camp with his brother and their Uncle Walt in Hollins Valley as the most important single experience of his life up to the age of twenty-five. It remained so vividly in his memory that thirty years later he could remind Gerald that he only shot one rabbit on that occasion and that a small bird shot in a young tree had been pointed out to him by his uncle." - Feinstein (Ted Hughes The Life of a Poet)
In her short story, "All The Dead Dears", Sylvia Plath bases the character uncle Jake, upon Walt Farrar.

Stock ID: 39098