Oxford Poetry 1949

First edition. 8vo. 59pp. Publisher's pale blue wraps printed in red. No jacket is called for. Introduction by the editors, Amis and Michie, who both contribute poems.

Very Good in somewhat stained and unevenly faded wrappers. Rare.

Amis and Michie got to know each other as undergraduates in Oxford and quickly established a weekly routine of meeting outside the Radcliffe Camera to dissect each other's poems: "During what cannot have been more than five or six weeks I produced about the same number of poems . . . about half my average yearly output over my poetry-writing life. James produced about as many. Nothing like it has happened to me before or since."

With characteristic youthful insouciance, they then turned up at Blackwell's bookshop and asked to be made co-editors of the 1949 issue – a wish that was granted. Contributors here include Elizabeth Jennings and John Bayley (later Warton Professor of English at Oxford and husband to novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch), who contributes three poems under the name Oliver Bayley.