‘Since poems should be self-explanatory I refrain from more foreword than this: I write poems for poets, and satires or grotesques for wits.’
So wrote Graves in this thin Cassell’s edition of Poems, 1938-1945. Published in January 1946, the entire first edition of 3000 copies sold out.
Somewhat cynically, Graves thought that people bought his poems on the basis of his prose.
This copy, once owned by Charles Brasch, is a first edition.