Title: The Poems and Sonnets.
Publisher: GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS
Publication Date: 1960
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Title page device and seven wood engraved title borders by John Buckland Wright. Eight initial letters by Eric Gill. One of 100 hand-numbered specially bound volumes of an edition limited to 470. Signed and dated by the editor on the front free endpaper- to Joyce Thirlaway Bridson (whose bookplate is on the front paste-down endpaper. Printed on Golden Cockerel Press watermarked paper. Top edges gilt. In very good condition-a few very light spots of rubbing to boards. 19 x 31.5 cm, 246pp. Original dark burgundy morocco signed by E.W. Hiscox, upper cover with gilt tooled cockerel design after John Buckland Wright, spine lettered in gilt. Eight initials from Eric Gill's wood-letters, acquired by Christopher Sandford from Robert Gibbings on taking over the Press, reused posthumously. Cockerel on cover and title page by Buckland Wright, and title borders, designed for Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1951), also reused posthumously. Both artists had a long association with the Press. Provenance: Joyce Thirlaway Bridson (née Rowe), 1915-89, worked at the BBC as a script writer & broadcaster where she met and married husband Douglas Geoffrey Bridson, 1910-1980, producer and author. Her first book was a collection of poems called " She Died Alive", 1945, & another book, a biography of her ancestor, Nicholas Rowe, who was Poet Laureate, 1715; she later researched and wrote The Filibuster: a study of the political ideas of Wyndham Lewis (1977), along with Douglas (they were both close friends of Wyndham Lewis in the latter part of his life). In 1964 Prof. Gwyn Jones and D. G. Bridson visited Greenland to record their impressions of the early Norse settlements & made a TV programme about it called The Norsemen In Greenland. This was the last book in which owner since 1933 Christopher Sandford was involved after the sale of the Golden Cockerel Press to Thomas Yoseloff in 1959. The Press ultimately closed in 1961. [Chambers and Sandford, pp.43-44; Cave and Manson, p.253]. Original printed prospectus loosely inserted. Bookseller's number #5081.