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Author: Eliot, T.S.
Title: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Place Published: London
Publisher:Faber and Faber Limited
Date Published: [1960]
Description: Yellow cloth decorated in red, pictorial jacket. Thirteenth impression.Signed and inscribed by T.S. Eliot on the front free endpaper to portrait painter Sir Gerald Kelly: “For Gerald Kelly with the warm regards & admiration of the author of these verses and the illustrator, T.S. Eliot (O.P. [Old Possum]).“ Eliot has amended two poems with blue ink: Of The Awefull Battle... (line 6 reading ‘They will now and again join in to the fray‘ corrected to ‘Or now and again they join in to the fray‘) and Shimbleshanks: The Railway Cat (line 56 reading ‘In the watches of the night he is always fresh and bright‘ amended to ‘Through hours of the night he is always fresh and bright‘).Gerald Kelly and Eliot struck up a close friendship back in the early 1920s, and in 1960 Kelly was commissioned to paint a portrait of Eliot, which is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institute.

Light soiling and toning to jacket with light rubbing at folds and edges; mild toning to bottom edge of cloth; offsetting to endpapers; else near fine.