Introduction by Peter Porter. 1st ed. 8vo. 146pp. P/b. Ex libris Edwin Morgan bearing his signature on the first page.


Ian Fletcher (1920-1988) was a British professor who specialized in Victorian literature. He spent the last six years of his life teaching at Arizona State University. His collected poems were published in 1998, ten years after his death.



Fletcher began to study for an external London University degree but the war intervened and he joined the army. He served in the Middle East, and latterly in Cairo, from 1941-1946. Cairo was something of a literary centre at this time and Fletcher came into contact with numerous other poets who also became friends, including Bernard Spencer, G S Fraser and Ruth Speirs. Fletcher always retained an interest in making sure that the work of Second World War poets was not underestimated or forgotten, supporting the Salamander Oasis Trust in their production of anthologies and putting on an exhibition, based on his donated collection, in Reading University Library in 1981



Edwin Morgan was born in Glasgow in 1920 and brought up in Rutherglen on the outskirts of the city. An unhappy only child of conservative middle-class parents Morgan felt that he had no-one he could talk to about his artistic enthusiasms, although his father gave him a sense of Glasgow's industrial history. In 1937 Morgan began his studies at Glasgow university but the war intervened. At first he registered as a Conscientious Objector but then requested a posting to the Royal Army Medical Corps and served with them from 1940 to 1946 in Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon. Returning to Glasgow he gained a first-class degree in English in 1947 and became a lecturer at the university, remaining there until his retirement, as a professor, in 1980.

Morgan's first book of poetry was published in 1952