Meet My Folks.

London: Faber and Faber,, 1961. Frieda's first birthday present First edition, first impression, the dedication copy, inscribed by Hughes on the front free endpaper six days prior to official publication, "To Frieda, on her first birthday, from Da, with love, April 1st, 1961". Meet My Folks was Hughes's third collection of poetry and his first book of children's verse. Hughes wrote this collection while Sylvia Plath was pregnant with Frieda. Plath excitedly wrote to her mother when discussing baby names: "Isn't it wonderful to have a children's book ready to be dedicated to whomever it is!" Having been rejected by Harper, Harcourt Brace, and the Atlantic Press, the collection was accepted by T. S. Eliot for Faber and Faber with only minor revisions. Plath wrote to her mother that "Tom Eliot is delighted with the drawings & poems in Meet My Folks! I can't wait to see the book: it is scheduled for Spring 1961, about in time for Frieda's first birthday" (Steinberg & Kukil, p. 516). In the work Hughes introduces his readers to his wackily reimagined family, including his sister Jane, who is "nothing but a great big crow". Hughes continued to reinvent his family for subsequent editions: "as so often happens with Hughes's poems, the formal stopping-point that a book represents is no guarantee that his imagination has reached its own final stopping point. He was adding new 'folks' and dropping others long after the book's first appearance" (Cushman, p. 241). Octavo. Original illustrated boards, titles to front cover and spine in red and blue. With dust jacket. Illustrated by George Adamson. Rubbing to board edges, faint foxing to book block edges, occasional finger-soiling; foxed jacket unclipped, spine faded, joints rubbed, nicks to fold ends: a near-fine copy in very good jacket. Sagar & Tabor A4a, their "AB" state, without priority. Keith Cushman, "Hughes's poetry for children", in Keith Sagar, ed., The Achievement of Ted Hughes, 1983; Peter K. Steinberg & Karen V. Kukil, eds, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II, 1956-1963, 2018.