First edition. The dedication copy. Inscribed by Hughes to Sylvia Plath on the title page, "To Sylvia, its true mother, with all my love, Ted. February 25th 1960, 4th Aniversary of St Botolph's.". Original maroon cloth in printed dustwrapper. A near fine copy in a very good dustwrapper with a little wear to the head of the spine.

The dedication copy of Hughes's second collection of poetry, which like his first he dedicated to his wife, Sylvia Plath. The inscription refers to it being the fourth anniversary of their first meeting.
Saint Botolph's Review was a Cambridge poetry journal, edited by David Ross, to which Hughes was a co-founder and principal contributor. The journal was a flop and was discontinued after one issue, but it has an indelible place in the history of modern poetry, by dint of its lively launch party on 25 February 1956, at which Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath first met.
Plath recalls their meeting in her journal, "Then the worst happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room... it was Ted Hughes. I started yelling about his poems...". The attraction was instant and mutual and what followed: a whirlwind romance, marriage, honeymoon in Spain, return to England shortly to be followed by America, made for an emotional and creative maelstrom that was to launch the careers of both Hughes and Plath, who would, for a brief period, shine so brightly as the golden couple of modern poetry.
Hughes received six authors' copies on 23rd February (some three weeks before the official publication date), Plath noting about this copy, "Lupercal, officially out March 18, came the day before - his six copies - very conveniently. They've changed the blue of the cover to green, which put us off, and the red on the jacket and the purple of the cover are a bit of a clash to my morbidly sensitive eye, but looking at the book without the jacket, it is a handsome affair..." - later to her Mother 25 February 1960.

PROVENANCE: Sylvia Plath (presentation inscription); Ted Hughes (following Plath suicide in 1963); Frieda Hughes (Hughes and Plath's daughter).

Sagar & Tabor A3a

Stock ID: 45803