Recoveries. Poems.

First edition. 8vo. 63pp. Navy blue cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket design by Francis Minns [priced 12s 6d net to front flap].

Author's fourth book of poetry following a mental breakdown in the early 1960s, it includes the Sequence in Hospital, which explores her hospitalisation with unsparing clarity: "What to say first? I learnt I was afraid/ Fear became absolute and I became/ Subject to it; it beckoned, I obeyed."

A prolific poet Jennings wrote quickly, revised little, and claimed that her poems "came out very clean." Her short, meditative lyrics, known for their simplicity, control, and range of feeling conveyed qualities that linked Jennings to a group of poets referred to as "The Movement", such as Amis, Gunn, and Larkin whose poetry reveals a shared love and acceptance of regular meter and rhyme.

Anointed "the bag lady of the sonnets" by the British tabloids on the occasion of the bestowment of the CBE by the Queen in 1992 – an honour she collected in her plimsolls – Jennings now ranks among the finest British poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Her Collected Poems, issued by Carcanet in 2012, add up to an impressive 1,100 pages.