The Old Stile Press Ltd

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Limited Edition. In his fascinating section, Peter Wakelin has turned his perceptive, art critic's gaze on the work of the artists with whom the Press has collaborated. Our decision not to print this book ourselves by letterpress means that each of our 40+ titles could be given the full visual as well as bibliographical description (with a colour section for bindings) that litho printing can afford and this has proved an excellent way of getting to know our books (second only to handling them) and of remembering those that have long sold out. The enterprise that is The Old Stile Press, still entirely restricted by our capacities and energies (as joint-founders and sole labourers) entered the year 2000 as a sprightly twenty-one year old. Our modus operandi, of teaming with artist/printmakers for the joint development of each of our books, was established early on and remains firmly in place. Our list of books at present 'in active preparation' is lengthy and strong and we plan to continue for as long as we possibly can! We are hugely grateful to those of our friends who encouraged us by buying books in the early days but nowadays we are endlessly surprised and proud at the incredible range and worldwide diversity of collector and special collection librarian who somehow find out about the books we produce, here in this beautiful valley, for the sole reason that we want to. We tried to design this book so that it would be a useful and enjoyable adjunct to a tiny or sizeable collection of our books, a help to librarians who may just have heard of us and an ambassador through which we may find new friends.

Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Hicks-Jenkins, Clive cover (illustrator). Limited Edition. We can safely assert that our first Bibliography (The Old Stile Press . . . in the twentieth century) was very well received when it was published ten years ago and is still highly regarded. Its aim to be entertaining and fun, as well as to contain all the information a librarian or bibliophile would need, was enthusiastically welcomed and it will not be surprising that, for this new volume, the same principles apply. . This time, however, the whole book (as well as Clive Hicks-Jenkins fabulous cover painting!) is printed in full colour. Each of our books that has appeared since the last Bibliography was completed in 1999 here has two double page spreads with its bibliographical details and images photographed and printed in colour so that the bindings are shown as well as the interiors. Nicolas writes about each, with anecdotes and dramas of their production or of how they came into being. He also contributes a short look into the future of books which may become! Frances writes about what happens to all these books once they arrive in the house from the binders - finding and keeping customers, providing them with information and generally delivering the goods . Nancy Campbell has written an Introductory essay on the work of these ten years, with a great appreciation of the ethos in which the books come into being, the commitment of the artists and writers (where the text is contemporary) with whom the Press has worked, and then the books themselves.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. MacNeill, Alyson (illustrator). Limited Edition. In this poem, written for one of his daughters, Kevin Crossley-Holland uses the metaphor of the lighting of each of four candles in an advent crown. Advent is a time of anticipation and of growing illumination. Each December day in the poem has a four-line stanza which tells of a new-found wonder in the child's world. As images to go beside these verses, Alyson MacNeill's engravings are a perfect response.

Soft cover. Condition: New. McDowall, Nicolas (illustrator). Limited Edition. The text of this somewhat unusual book is taken verbatim from the tape-recorded recollection of a single night of extraordinary dream or vision or hallucination while under the benign influence of morphine -- given in hospital, a number of years ago, to relieve post-operative pain. The images came originally from photographic sources but were captured, simplified and developed by the author/printer to give some approximation to the visual aspects of that ecstatic experience. Unexpected developments, after the book had been planned, designed and indeed printed, gave rise to the need for some 'Afterwords' -- so an additional four-page leaflet is loosely inserted into each copy. Signed by Author(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Hicks-Jenkins, Clive (illustrator). Limited Edition. In 2001, Newport Museum and Art Gallery housed a major exhibition of the paintings and drawings of Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Though partly retrospective, the main part of the exhibition was a sequence of work entitled The Mare's Tale.This centred on the mumming figure of the Mari Lwyd used symbolically and especially to explore the artist's journey toward acceptance of his father's death. Poems by Catriona Urquhart, which were inspired by these works, were exhibited beside them.The book, here published by The Old Stile Press, presents these poems and, in turn, has images by Clive Hicks-Jenkins specially prepared for the purpose.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Reddick, Peter (illustrator). Limited Edition. "A copy of this 'Almanack' (entitled British Merlinand billed as having been 'made and compiled for his Country's Benefit, by Cardanus Rider') has remained in Nicolas' family since the eighteenth century and, as a child, he was shown the special small, leather-bound book with a clasp housing a metal stylus to be used as a pencil to make notes on a specially stiffened page. There are delicious marbled paper pockets at each end and the pages are printed in black and red. The book was one of the inspirational spurs towards becoming a printer!For this book, the 'Notes on Husbandry' sections (an important feature of the Almanack) have been reprinted with the advice for each month being printed alongside drawings made by Peter Reddick which wonderfully evoke the eighteenth century activities in the home and the estate - planting and pruning, sowing and harvesting and how to maintain the health of the family with physick and good sense. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Pitts, J. Martin (illustrator). Limited Edition. "Mediaeval Mystery Plays wove into dramatic form many of the strongest and most elemental stories in the Bible. Here, the mounting anguish of Abraham, commanded by God to sacrifice his only son, is answered by Isaac's innocent, hardly questioning obedience. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Pitts, J. Martin (illustrator). Limited Edition. A book of images by J. Martin Pitts, with a transcript of his last journal assembled, designed and printed by Nicolas McDowall.Here, therefore, we offer many images, largely cut or etched lino, some drawings reproduced as line blocks, together with introductory matter by Martin's partner, Chris Newitt, and Nicolas McDowall. Then the journal with a tipped-in photograph of Martin enjoying a sunny holiday with Chris. Many of the images demonstrate his magnificent ability to give energy and life to the human body, especially that of the male, in movement, in repose, anguished or happy, delicate or strong. His work over all those years, like his friendship, was unfailingly life-affirming.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Included. Tanner, Robin (illustrator). 1st Edition, Limited Edition. The delightful images were drawn (at the behest of Wilfrid Meynell, the poet's husband and publisher) directly on the pages of a single extra-illustrated copy of the first edition.The wonderful years of our friendship with Robin and Heather Tanner (and those since their deaths in 1988 and 1993), have been punctuated by amazing synchronicities, serendipities and chance meetings with strangers who turn out also to have been touched in some way by these remarkable people. 2004 marked the centenary of the birth of Robin Tanner and we had been sad not to be able to publish a celebratory volume from The Old Stile Press. How entirely typical, then, that the post should one day bring us an elegant catalogue from an antiquarian book dealer, known to us but who had not sent us catalogues before. In it we read, with great excitement, of the delicious book already mentioned. We had to acquire it! It was clear that the drawings could be printed from line blocks. As the drawings were often related closely to particular poems, we decided to retain the pagination of the original but the books format and layout were changed and Eric Gill's Joanna type was employed. A desire for endpapers meant that we could use one of the designs that Robin made for us in 1984.To print this book has been a delight and we are happy to be able to share with others these charming drawings, set among the noble poems for which they were made.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Pitts, J. Martin (illustrator). Limited Edition. Perched on a cliff that towers a thousand windy feet above the southern Aegean stood the ancient city of Thera. First among the sanctuaries and temples of the city was that of Apollo Karneios and in the middle of the month Karneios (August-September) the Karneia took place - the solemn and important festival introduced from Sparta.At the height of the festivities and when the moon was full, were the Gymnopaediae. On a specially dedicated square, close by the cliff edge, and watched by the citizens (some of whom were moved to express their feelings in graffiti which are still visible in the stones) naked boys danced and sang paeans to the patron of the palaestra, Apollo Kourotrophos, Apollo the 'boy-raiser'.The beauty of movement and form that would have been seen on these occasions is here imagined by Martin Pitts in a swirling sequence of linocut images. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Martin, Gillian (illustrator). Limited Edition. The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World and The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple by Edward Lear. In addition to the well-loved limericks, alphabets and songs, Edward Lear wrote only these two pieces of sustained nonsense prose. They were published in 1871 in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets and are reprinted here in a way which we feel Lear would have approved. Gillian Martin's drawings, which appear on every page, have echoes of Lear's style but are in no way pastiches. With true Lear logic, each story starts from its own end of the book and, where they meet, is to be found an 'extra' loose sheet reprinting the even less well-known Nonsense Cookery. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Elwyn, John (illustrator). Limited Edition. We have a life-long love for the mystical, pastoral school of painting that flowered so richly in Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision and which erupted again in the neo-romantic paintings and book illustrations of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.For years we had enjoyed the energy of John Elwyn's neo-romantic vision in painting and knew that he also enjoyed the illustration of books. There was, however, a particularly exciting moment when we encountered some of his early drawings at the same time as we were reading the poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym. We knew that we had to try to link the two.It transpired that John Elwyn did indeed have a great love for the Welsh poet - whom he read in Welsh - and was eager to work on images that reflected the timelessness of the poetic subjects of love and the natural world, to bridge the gap from mediaeval words to twentieth century images.The song thrush, the skylark, and the cuckoo; the wind as one of many messengers of love, the seasons and, above all, the 'leafy hut' which the poet builds for meetings with his love - are described in immediate but timeless words by the poet in the 1350s and echoed by the artist in the late twentieth century. Little seems to change! Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. d'Arbeloff, Natalie (illustrator). Limited Edition. " Although these drawings were made more than half a century ago, the idea that they might be made into a book is less than a year old as I write and the texts and references and introductory pieces have been researched and written during that time. I was an art student in New York City when I dipped a brush in Indian ink and these drawings emerged in quick succession. What I remember most clearly about that period is a sense of freedom and excitement. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Lemaire, Angela (illustrator). Limited Edition. The seventeenth century writings of Thomas Traherne lay largely unknown until they were re-discovered early in the twentieth century. The writing is celebrated today for its rapture and delight in nature and its luminous, visionary quality but he also wrote of darkness and struggle.Angela Lemaire has chosen passages which speak of the search for the pure vision of infancy -- that vision which encompasses all things, the depths and the heights. She has responded with images engraved in wood which display the interconnections between everything within the universe. The eternity within us responds to the eternity of nature, life and others.Text and images are all held within borders which reiterate this joy in all that surrounds us. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Included. Pitts, J.Martin (illustrator). Limited Edition. Martin Pitts' name has been associated with The Old Stile Press since the very beginning. He made linocuts for our first book and, since then, a succession of projects with his images has been eagerly awaited and well received by many collectors. The Hon. Roden Noel lived from 1834 to 1894. In this poem he mixes elements of the story of Salmacis & Hermaphroditus from Ovid's Metamorphoses with memories of moods, settings and atmospheres from his Irish childhood, combining (as John Addington Symonds wrote) full sensuous feeling for the material world with an ever-present sense of the spirit informing it and bringing all its products into vital harmony. This enables him to paint pictures of voluptuous beauty and concrete form . . . Martin Pitts' watery images are printed in dark honey-coloured ink on a light honey coloured Ingres paper with amazing reflected light achieved by further blocks printed in white. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Philpott, Sara (illustrator). Limited Edition. Robin Skelton, a poet published and read on both sides of the Atlantic, was for many years a Professor of English -- of literature and of creative writing.In Lens of Crystal, he explores (partly as an act of homage to his own Celtic ancestry) the beautiful and ingenious verse forms of medieval Wales. These developed from the sixth century onwards but were codified, for the Bardic contests of the Eisteddfods, from 1330. In responding to the challenge of using each of the twenty-four forms, in poems written in English, Robin Skelton offers consummate mastery of them. He has also written poems of intense beauty.Sara Philpott has responded to the timeless in the poems by etching and cutting in lino images which often evoke the sun, wind and rain beating on a Welsh mountain and on the people who work and live and love there. There are mysterious textures, shapes appear as though from a mist . . . the elements are all-enveloping. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Brockway, Harry (illustrator). Within the covers of Grimm's Household Tales lurk stories of peculiar power and perennial attraction. Despite the fact that many pantomime plots have been drawn from this source, children's stories most of them simply are not -- rather they offer material for endless reinterpretation and a feeling that hidden truths are there to be disinterred by the wise.Faithful John is one of the best, most complicatedly wrought and, more than most, liberally filled with apparent parables. The three ravens who haunt the attempts of the young prince to woo the beautiful princess, the faithful servant whose selfless acts are misinterpreted to the point of his being executed, whereupon his lifeless body turns to stone and can only be redeemed by child sacrifice . . . which in turn is reversed by the power of faith. . . powerful and fascinating stuff.Quite the stuff, too, to draw a set of incredibly powerful images from the engraving tools of Harry Brockway. They are made all the more powerful because of the demands made by the unusual shape of all except the frontispiece - 198x34mm. Signed by Author(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Philpott, Sara (illustrator). Limited Edition. Lucian Blaga (1895-1961) is one of the most important of Romanian poets.The Poems of Light (published in 1916) was his first collection, the work of a brilliant young poet/philosopher steeped in all the elements of the expressionist movement. Much influenced by expressionist painting, especially that of Van Gogh, the poet paints fiery landscapes seen through the interior eye.The 'translator/poet' team worked closely together on this true 'labour of love'.For each poem a literal translation from the original Romanian was slowly worked into a poem in English, with the poet finding a structure and rhythm that evolved from his understanding and response to reading Blaga.Sara Philpott is well-known to The Old Stile Press from her fascinating etched linocuts in Lens of Crystal by Robin Skelton. Her images here are a powerful mixture of drawing, monotype and collage and resonate perfectly with the atmosphere and moods of the poems. This book is by no means the outcome of some academic or intellectual exercise.These poems are youthful and fiery and full of original imagery. Supported by this set of rich and challenging images, readers with any interest in early twentieth century poetry are in for a really exciting treat.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Isaac, Bert (illustrator). Limited Edition. "We, at The Old Stile Press, were thrilled to be shown a recently rediscovered collection of book designs made in the 1940s by our good friend, the artist Bert Isaac, largely for his own pleasure as if he were fulfilling commissions such as he might have been given by publishers. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Lemaire, Angela (illustrator). Limited Edition. Thomas the Rhymer, also known as Thomas of Erceldoune, was a real person who lived in the 13th century. While wandering alone in the forest lands of Melrose Abbey, Roxburghshire, Thomas saw a beautiful lady riding on a palfrey. He took her to be the Queen of Heaven. She denies it and tells him she is from 'another country'. She is, rather, the Queen of the Fairies.There follows an otherworld journey which he related in a visionary poem that has come down to us in various ballad forms and also in several romance-prophecies dating from the fifteenth century. A later version of one of these is the text used here as we follow Thomas's request for love, their eventual love-making and many adventures before they have to part at the Eildon Tree - but not before the Lady has given him the gift of truth, after which he is known as True Thomas. This mysterious, compelling and exciting story still seems to have a hold on our psyches - the transforming powers of the hidden muse are very much alive.Apart from the glowingly mystical engravings that Angela Lemaire has made for this edition, her fascinating Afterword is seeded with an earlier set of engravings depicting the twelve months. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Lawrance, Inger (illustrator). Limited Edition. Ever since the tenth century, versions of The Seafarer have been committed to books, though it was no doubt part of the tradition of poems recited aloud and learned by heart. Here, Kevin Crossley-Holland has written the poem in modern English verse which retains all the Anglo-Saxon poet's passionate love for the sea while recognising its hardships and dangers. Inger Lawrance was Danish and the sea features prominently in much of her painting and printmaking. Her woodcutting technique was learned partly in Japan and her imagery is very spare, almost calligraphic. The book itself is somewhat delicately bound in the Japanese style but is enclosed, almost wrapped, in a portfolio of rough linen and blue buckram - as though it had survived a turbulent time at sea and is now rescued especially for the reader.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Pusch, Steffi (illustrator). Limited Edition. The Swimmer tells the story of a writer working in her room overlooking a river during a long, hot summer. Overcoming her initial fear of the river with its power and strength to overwhelm a swimmer, she steps into the water and into an unexplored realm of emotion. Words and pictures swim together in the cooling water past tree-lined banks, under a bridge and around curving bends . . . so much is concentrated into this depiction of a self-revelatory experience. Later. A richly inventive photographer reads the story and is inspired to create a suite of images to accompany it, employing both ancient and modern photographic techniques. At this point the book designer/printer feels that the story s sense of flow and the photographer s images, which float as if in the water alongside the swimmer, could happily be brought together in a book where type has been chosen for slow contemplative reading and the cover design places the whole in the heart of nature. The story curls across the page slowing the reader to the pace of the swimmer. Emotions crowd in as initial fear moves to exhilaration, apprehension turns to pleasure.S.J. Butler s words and Steffi Pusch s pictures together create an atmosphere in which the reader too can share the emotion of the story. They each write a preface to introduce their approach to storytelling and its presentation through photography.

Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Moore, Andy (illustrator). Limited Edition. Nicolas worked with Andy Moore, calligrapher, on this delightfully lighthearted book in which Andy has applied his splendidly characterful style of calligraphy to a poem written by Keats for his younger sister, A Song about Myself. Photopolymer makes it possible to render, very faithfully by letterpress, the delights of pen on paper (or even quill!). Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Hicks-Jenkins, Clive (illustrator). Limited Edition. With an essay by Dr. Peter Wakelin: The enigmatic shepherd: the sweet and bitter love of Richard Barnfield (1574-1627) When The Affectionate Shepheard was first published, in London in 1594, its author was 20 years of age and immediately became a celebrity -- although he ceased to write six years later. In the centuries since, however, both poem and poet have largely disappeared from sight. Printings have been few and this one is thought to be the very first to be accompanied by images.The poem followed the rich tradition of pastoral poetry and was influenced especially by the second Eclogue of Vergil, taking unrequited love as its theme and, as its subject, the love of a shepherd, Daphnis, for the young man, Corydon. An essay, putting the work fascinatingly in its historical and literary context, has been specially written by Dr. Peter Wakelin for inclusion in this edition. If the poem is an unusual and worthwhile rediscovery, so is the printmaking technique employed by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Involving glass and a layer of pigment, it is more akin to line engraving on, say, metal than to any form of drawing.This publication is also remarkable for being the first of our books to be printed entirely on paper handmade by Frances McDowall at The Old Stile Press.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Macdonald, Robert (illustrator). Limited Edition. The poems are taken from Songs and Sonnets and Elegies, the earliest writings of John Donne (1572-1631). This love poetry is intense, rhetorical and energetic . . . using paradox and pun, intellect and passion, written by a young man delighting in life. It includes lines which have become so much part of our language that we sometimes forget that they were written by Donne. He later took holy orders and wrote religious and devotional poems and powerful sermons as Dean of St Paul s. Robert Macdonald's woodcut images are equally strong, immediate and passionate, sharing the poet's delightfully down to earth approach to sexuality both physical and emotional. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Reddick, Peter (illustrator). Limited Edition. This book is a three-way collaboration of the words (the poet's) and the image (the engraver's) and the space between (the printer/designer).On this occasion, it is not just one art form responding to another. Sometimes a poem responded to a visual image, sometimes vice versa; many pages are more collaborative still, with a sketch from one prompting a draft from the other, worked up to a finished picture and redrafted poem once the printer's hand has set them in their space. Poppies, trees, fire, natural forms all excite the different forms of expression found here.Peter Reddick was, for many years, one of the most highly regarded of British wood engravers and his work has appeared in many Penguin books, those of the Folio Society and Limited Editions Club, New York. He has inspired students not only in Glasgow and Bristol but further afield in Ghana and he was the founder of Spike Island, the lively Bristol Printmaking studio. Philip Gross is a renowned poet and successful writer of thrilling and challenging novels for young people, of plays, science fiction and radio short stories. ' . . he should be recognized as one of England's very best poets . . . for the exuberance of his imagination.' (TLS). He is currently Professor of Creative writing at the University of Glamorgan.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Onken, Michael (illustrator). Limited Edition. "A Play for voices Many years ago we celebrated the seventieth birthday of George Mackay Brown by publishing In the Margins of a Shakespeare. It has long been out of print but we are now able, with the kind help of his literary executors, to print an edition of a previously unpublished play for voices written in 1984.There are many stories and legends of selkies the seals that surround the shores of Orkney their deep brown eyes that captivate humans, their singing that mesmerises. George Mackay Brown had written stories of them. Then we met an American artist, Michael Onken, who came regularly to Scotland to draw and paint and had developed a passion for the writing of GMB and for selkies which he drew while on Orkney. We asked the literary executors if by any chance there might be any unpublished writing about selkies - and almost by return we were offered The Girl from the Sea. It is a simply told play which involves a young man, his elderly parents and the arrival of a beautiful girl in their midst . . . Michael Onken has indulged his love of representing the antics of seals in the water, extending over several page openings, he has cut wood and lino to tell the story with imagery which captures the isolation of a croft on Orkney. Perhaps the play was devised for radio, perhaps for performance at a festival we have not been told but here the characters first created in words are brought to life in the pages of a book.In a much treasured letter sent to us when George Mackay Brown was still alive, he wrote: Signed by Illustrator(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Cour, Glenys (illustrator). Limited Edition. Imagine a kingdom in the Himalayas around nineteen hundred years ago. A reckless young poet who lives at the court falls passionately in love with the king s daughter . . . King Sundava uncovers the secret and immediately flings Chauras, the poet, into a dungeon. Throughout the dark night before he is to be executed, the poet writes about his love for Vidya, remembering each moment of their times together in ecstatic verses. Even now . . . fifty times he sings of their love. This, then, is the nature of Black Marigolds.The poem was written in Sanskrit but the verses were rendered into English by E. Powys Mathers in the early twentieth century and the poem was published in 1919 by Blackwell. It became as iconic as the poetry of Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound. Vernon Watkins regarded Black Marigolds as the most beautiful love poetry he knew and the poet s widow, Gwen, here writes a Preface.It was Vernon Watkins own poem Taliesin and the Mockers that brought The Old Stile Press together with Gwen Watkins and with Glenys Cour who did the magnificent images.Again for this book, Glenys Cour has used her techniques of collage, involving the use of black and white papers, some starkly contrasting, some with patterned, textured effects achieved with monotype and stippling. Bringing these together she creates an intense world filled with moonlight, flowers, courtyards with fountains and the sun disappearing into the sea . . . as the poet remembers the times when Vidya was beside him.The book is covered all over with a gently rippling green and grey patterned paper, and the binding has an enfolding flap presenting the reader with an image of Vidya which can be ever present as you read Chauras poems. Signed by Illustrator(s).

Soft cover. Condition: New. Lemaire, Angela (illustrator). Limited Edition. There are some stories that have been re-told so often in different contexts that it is refreshing to go back to the earliest version to try to recapture the contemporary mood. Angela Lemaire's visual imagination is stirred by such exploration - her lyrical lines in large wood and lino cuts move us to follow her Pyed Pyper, whom she invests with symbolic power far beyond that of a simple musician. Richard Verstegan was the first (1634) to tell the story in English, of how Hamelin was freed from rats by the playing of a piper; but the Town Council's refusal to keep to their agreement to pay uses forceful language matched by a stern, forbidding, hostile group of dark figures. No more the summery piper freeing the town but an entrancing being who transfixes the townspeople while the children dance to his tunes into the surrounding hills. As the sun sets the evening sky aflame, the children disappear into enfolding dark green shadows, never to be seen again. Here, the delicate relationship between the people, the land, the elements and the seasons demonstrate the need for respect one for the other. The imagery and colours reflect this and stunning double page spreads re-enforce the powerful medieval story. Signed by Author(s).

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. Petts, John (illustrator). Limited Edition. There are many places which claim Dylan Thomas as 'theirs' -- whether it is the village in which he grew up, the London cafés and pubs that he frequented, New York where he was idolised but Laugharne, overlooking the estuary of the Towy, is where he and his family lived and where many of his best and best-loved poems were worked on lovingly, painstakingly. There he crystallised into complex language, form and metre the profound effect, on his whole being, of the land with its surrounding seas that is Wales. It is these poems that we now present, fifty years after his death. The seventeen titles will immediately evoke the ringing tones of the poet reading aloud Fern Hill, Over Sir John's Hill, Poem on his birthday, Poem in October, Do not go gentle into that good night, After the funeral; even a moving extract from the radio play Under Milk Wood, which irreverently and yet so movingly brought to life the characters he saw around him. In this volume the often long, reverberant lines are given space to breathe not turned round or hard up against the margins and they are placed alongside wood-engraved images by John Petts.An artist of considerable versatility who worked in many media, but who especially loved the engraved line together with type, John Petts drew and engraved images inspired in his turn by the land and sea of Wales birds soar, waves arch over the shore, bays curve between headlands, hands clasp protectively. These John Petts drew out of the poems he loved but not until now have most of them been seen. The collection had been made some fifteen years ago by Lynn Hughes, and it was he who suggested to us that together we might create a book from the poems and John Petts' blocks that had been completed, some preparatory drawings and a number of earlier blocks, all to celebrate this anniversary. Lynn has also written a Preface to the book full of rich atmosphere. While seeking permission to use the Petts blocks we discovered that Kusha, Anna and Catrin Petts were delighted with the idea that they might colour the engravings for a special edition just as John would often have done. The binding includes an image (derived from a photograph) of the poet looking out over the Laugharne estuary, the cloth of the slipcase, the leather spine and the printed paper sides are all sea colours while the surging wave is an enlarged version of one of the engravings within.