Both inscribed on the front endpapers: “S.S. from R.H.” in November 1941 and July 1942, with the posthumous Sassoon book label, reproducing his initials. These pamphlets bear the imprint on the lower wrappers of “Packington’s Pound late ‘Flying Fame’ “ and the first is identified as the superior coloured issue, priced at 50 cents rather than 25: The Muse and the Mastiff has a pencilled note to the printer on page 9. Both are in an original mailing envelope addressed to Sassoon, and noted as passed by the censor.
Silver Wedding, attractively hand-coloured, includes ‘Verses from ‘To Deck a Woman’’, Hodgson’s anti-feather-trade poem.
Generally classed as a Georgian poet, Hodgson counted among his friends Edward Thomas, W. H. Davies, John Freeman, and Siegfried Sassoon. “[His] main inspirations were the enchantment of nature and man’s idiotic abuse of it, as well as a passionate love of animals, particularly birds. He also possessed a unique vision of man and history, set in a commanding sweep of historical imagination. His most praised poem, ‘The Song of Honour’, is a rapturous recital of the world’s harmonious hymn of being and was a huge influence on a generation of writers which followed him. His last poem, ‘The Muse and the Mastiff’, taking off from a single line of Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, is, to quote Mick Imlah, ‘as vigorous and strangely charming as it is cranky and incoherent’ (Imlah, 230).” (John Harding, ODNB entry).
Fine copies.