Inscribed by author:
Includes both typed and handwritten letter by the author addressed to "Mrs. Edrich", dated 1976 and 1978 thanking her for her for giving him a check


"John Bayliss (1919–2008) was a British poet[1] and significant literary editor of the World War II period; later in life a civil servant. He was born in Gloucestershire, and was an undergraduate at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He served in the RAF during the war."
From Wikipedia

From front flap:
"While several of the poems in this book have war as their theme, the poet is more concerned with the feeiings of individuals than the destinees of nations; for him, history is the history of human nature, and poetry its most intense epression of feeling. His writing is in the Romantic tradition, but it has an unusual power behind it and such poems as The Wreck have been singled out by the critics for their vivid and macabre force. Readers who have followed the reecent trend in Modern anthologies will have already met with his work and will welcome a more complete collection. Those who have not may discover that modern poetry still has the ability to give pleasant suprises."


He edited: The Fortune Anthology (1942) with Nicholas Moore, and Douglas Newton; New Road (1943 and 1944) with Alex Comfort; A Romantic Miscellany (1946) with Derek Stanford. His collection The White Knight and other poems was published in 1944. He contributed in the war years to Poetry London and Poetry Quarterly; later to Poetry Review. He was also published in Air Force Poetry (1944). In 1977 he published "Venus in Libra" in full, some sections of which had been published in "Poetry Quarterly" and "New Road 1944"
He is sometimes associated with the New Apocalyptics, perhaps because of his poem Apocalypse and Resurrection; he is also called a surrealist, or New Romantic.
John Bayliss died on 18 August 2008"