Description
AB119040, Spencer Bernard; Bowen Roger (editor), Collected Poems, Oxford, 1981, Oxford University Press, First Edition, Red Paper Covered Boards, Very Good, Very Good, Signed by Editor, 192119303, xxxiii, 149pp. Anthony Thwaite’s copy with his ownership signature on the ffep along with a host of others including those of both Spencer’s widow Anne Humphreys & their son (Piers) as well as Martin Dodsworth, Peter Robinson & Peter Carpenter. Additionally, inscribed generously on the title by Bowen for Thwaite with a tls laid in thanking him for his favourable review in the TLS. Also laid in are both the review itself as well as Thwaite’s notes on the reverse of the publisher’s & the TLS’ review slips etc. Laid in at the rear is the heavily annotated text of the talk “Bernard Spencer and the Anthologists” Thwaite delivered at Peter Robinson’s invitation for the Centenary Conference held in 2009 at the University of Reading (where Spencer’s archive is kept) upon which occasion the ffep was evidently signed by attendees. Accompanying this are his extensive notes as well as the related correspondence with Robinson (Thwaite’s in ms & photocopied ts). Also laid in at their respective printed poems are a transcript of Spencer’s typed & extensive ms notes for “Boat Poem” with Adrian Caesar’s accompanying essay (13pp.), a photocopy from the Poet’s Voice showing the worksheet ms of “By a Breakwater” alongside a typed transcript as well as a ts of Grigson’s piece from The Private Art on Spencer’s poem The Part of Plenty” about his first wife; “I don’t know another poem in which the shape and nature of a particular woman is so fixed
