FAINLIGHT, Harry Selected Poems London: Turret Bookshop, 1986.
Large 8vo., mock blue morocco lettered in black to backstrip; housed in the original unclipped dust wrapper (£12.50) designed by Ralph Steadman; pp. [iv], v, [i], 78; with black and white photograph frontis of the poet; a couple of brown spots to the DJ, and diry/finger marks; else near-fine
First edition, limited to 1000 copies. Edited by his sister Ruth, who also provides the Introduction. Ginsberg also provides a short memoir.
This copy has been inscribed by Ruth Fainlight, the poet's sister, to the art critic and author Edward Lucie-Smith. Also loosely inserted is an additional compliments card with the poem 'April' inscribed by Bernard Stone, the publisher, in the year of publication.
Harry Fainlight (1935-1982) was an Anglo-American poet who was closely associated with the Beat movement in 1960s America. Educated at Cambridge University, Fainlight was a contemporary of Ted Hughes, and with his duel citizenship he travelled freely to and from America, where he met Allen Ginsberg, who later referred to him as "the most gifted poet of his generation". When, at the suggestion of Hughes, Faber and Faber offered to publish his work, he lit a petrol soaked-rag and posted it through the publisher's letterbox - he had suffered with mental illness for the majority of his adult life. He died in 1982 from pneumonia after taking an evening walk.
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