TODD, Ruthven ~ Until Now. Double signed.

FIRST EDITION. The Fortune Press, London: [1942]

8vo., navy publisher’s cloth, lettered vertically in gilt to backstrip; together in the blue printed dustwrapper featuring a list of other Fortune Press poets to the rear panel; outer edges untrimmed; THE BOOK a very good copy, slightly spotted to the outer edge; light fading to boards; the very good WRAPPER roughly clipped, some discolouration to the spine and folds, with chip to head of spine, and a couple of discrete internal tape repairs; bookplate of A P A Goodall to front free endpaper. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition of this collection of poems, double-signed by Todd, with inscription to front free endpaper “To Peter love Ruthven June 1972” and neatly signed beneath his printed name to title. A collection of 39 early poems by the Scottish poet and artist Ruthven Todd, who was a lifelong friend of Julian Symons (credited here in the dedicatory note as having helped him prepare the text of this edition). Todd’s associations also extended to Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound. Today, he is perhaps best remembered for his two allegorical novels Over the Mountain (1939) and The Lost Traveller (1943), as well as having rescued Salvador Dali from suffocating inside a heavy diving suit during the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Very Good