GUNN, Thom (1929-2004). My Sad Captains, London, 1961, 8vo, original cloth, dust-jacket. FIRST EDITION, 2nd impression, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed, "Thom Gunn, with best wishes for Clive." With 5 other books by Thom Gunn, all SIGNED BY THE POET. (6)

GUNN, Thom (1929-2004).  My Sad Captains and other poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1962. 8vo (217 x 140mm). Half title. Original purple cloth, the spine lettered in gilt, dust-jacket with the price of 12s 6d. unclipped (the jacket with a few short tears and very slight loss at the corners). Provenance: Clive Wilmer (signature on the front free endpaper); a few pencil notes by the same. FIRST EDITION, second impression, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the title page, "Thom Gunn, with best wishes for Clive." A modern reproduction of Caravaggio's "Conversion on the Way to Damascus" is pasted onto the front free endpaper. With 5 other books by Thom Gunn, namely, Fighting Terms (London, 1962, original cloth, dust-jacket, reprint based on the 1954 original with a printed note on the verso of the title stating: "This edition with revisions first published in 1962"), The Sense of Movement (London, 1963, original cloth, dust-jacket, third impression), Touch (London, 1967, original cloth, dust-jacket, FIRST EDITION), Moly (London, 1971, original cloth, dust-jacket, FIRST EDITION, with a newspaper photograph of the poet pasted onto the front free endpaper) and Jack Straw's Castle (London, 1976, original cloth, dust-jacket), ALL SIGNED BY THOM GUNN on the title pages. "[Thom Gunn's] celebration of men of action (soldiers, motorcyclists, tough boys), his fascination with violence, his gallery of heroes (who range from Elvis Presley to Caravaggio), together with his predominantly low-key, rational, laconic, colloquial manner provide an interesting synthesis of the English Movement and the romantic elements of American Beat Poetry" (The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Drabble, 1985). Provenance: From the Collection of Clive Wilmer (1945-2025; please see lot 418 for further biographical information about Clive Wilmer, in particular the section relating to Thom Gunn, with whom Clive Wilmer, a distinguished poet himself, maintained an enduring friendship over forty years). (6)