THE AUTHOR’S MARKED COPY WITH INSERTED CORRESPONDENCE
LEE, Laurie.
Cider with Rosie … with drawings by John Ward.
London, Hogarth Press, 1959.
8vo, pp. [4, blank, preface], 280, [4, illustration, blank]; with illustrations printed in-text throughout (of which several full-page); publisher’s green cloth-grained paper, spine lettered in gilt, with dustjacket and belly-band; jacket and band rather worn with losses to spine; with the author’s pencil annotations to c. 12 pp., two loosely inserted placemarkers (of which one an invitation for 29 January 1960), front free endpaper signed in ink by Sybil Thorndike, Monica Sims, and Barbara F[?]ford, loosely inserted correspondence (see below).
First edition, second impression, the author’s copy with his pencil marks for public readings and loosely inserted correspondence including praise from Leonard Woolf.
Although Lee annotated several copies of Cider with Rosie, the present copy has evidently been marked for public readings: his pencil notes select passages, reorder and rearrange them, and make occasional changes to the text.
The signatures to the front endpaper may date to 1960, when Lee sat next to Lady Thorndike at the Foyle’s Poetry Prize.
The correspondence comprises:
WOOLF, Leonard. Typed letter, dictated and signed on his behalf, ‘Dear Laurie’. London, 2 December 1958. 1 p., ‘I read your manuscript over the weekend and I must write to you at once to say how much I enjoyed it and how extraordinarily good I think it is. Recollections of childhood are so often boring, at least to me, but your book is the opposite of boring, it is intensely alive, real, and at the same time poetry.’
[SMALLWOOD, Norah?] Autograph postcard, initialled ‘NS’. London, [franked 30 November 1959]. ‘987 today! HM the late QM. will have to look to her crown.’
HORNBY, Michael. Autograph letter, signed, to ‘Mr. Lee’. London, 11 November 1960. 2 pp., regarding Lee’s receipt of the W. H. Smith literary prize.
SPENCER, T. C. Typed letter with autograph addition, signed, to ‘Mr. Lee’. London, 22 November 1960. 1 p., regarding the W. H. Smith literary prize.
LANE, Allen. Typed letter, signed, ‘Dear Laurie Lee’. Harmondsworth, 30 November 1961. 1 p., thanking Lee and proposing meeting in the New Year.
LANCASTER, Jim. Autograph letter, signed, to ‘Mr. Lee’. Chorley, 24 October 1984. 2 pp., regarding his attempts at writing, seeking Lee’s advice, and enclosing the programme for an in-the-round performance of Cider with Rosie at the Octagon in Bolton.
