London: Keepsake Press, 1973

8vo, pp. 23. Original illustrated light green stiff paper wrappers, lettered and with arborial linocut in dark green to front wrapper. edges rough cut. Sewn binding. Enclosures as below. Edges of (oversized) wrappers a little bumped, but a near fine copy.

First edition. One of 200 copies, 30 of which were numbered and signed. INSCRIBED BY SCUPHAM TO VERSO OF FRONT FREE ENDPAPER TO FELLOW POET CLIVE WILMER:'To Clive Wilmer from Peter Scupham November '76'. WITH SCUPHAM'S POEM THE DOVES IN HOLOGRAPH BENEATH THE PRESENTATION, FURTHER SIGNED AND DATED. Wilmer's ownership signature dated November 1976 to front free endpaper, and typed poems and enclosures laid in.

As well as a poet, Peter Scupham [1933-2022] was a teacher, a bookseller (the proprietor of Mermaid Books, of blessed memory) and (with John Mole) co-founder of the Mandeville Press -- established, in Scupham's words, 'to publish good poetry cheaply'. Mandeville brought Scupham into contact with Roy Harley Lewis, who ran the Keepsake Press (the publisher of this collection) 'as a cure for insomnia. He published anything that took his fancy -- a huge miscellany of collections and individual poems -- and was a worse printer than we were. [...] He was not an aesthetic printer, but wonderful in his way'.

Laid in to the book are four typed poems, unsigned and undated, and each on a separate sheet: The Cart; A Warning Against Sharing The Children's Dreams; Neighbour; and The Gatehouse. Also laid in are a 1976 Mandeville Broadsheet of a Humphrey Clucas poem, Pilgrimage, and an invitation to a Mandeville Press poetry event held at Hitchin library on 10 November 1976, featuring the poets Jenny Joseph, Andew Waterman and Peter Scupham -- almost certainly the occasion at which Scupham presented this gift to Wilmer.