Limited first edition. Royal 8vo. Pp. xli, 1333. Publisher's navy blue cloth backstrip over orange-brown paper boards, titled in gilt on a red inset to spine; burgundy endpapers. Appendices, Notes & Indexes. The limited first edition, housed in a deep blue cloth and burgundy paper slipcase. #177/200 copies specially bound by Smith Settle, Otley.
Published posthumously, the Collected Poems spans fifty years of work, from Hawk in the Rain (1957) to Birthday Letters (1998). It also includes the complete texts of such seminal publications as Crow (1970) and Tales from Ovid (1997), as well as those children's poems that Hughes felt crossed over into adult poetry. It further includes small press publications and editions that, until now, remained uncollected. "A guardian spirit of the land and language." –Seamus Heaney
[Keith Sagar, Ted Hughes: A Bibliographical Supplement 1996–2013, A127]