
Luke Batterham
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'I ADMIT, CROW IS A BEAST THAT SWEETENS NO FEAST': Ted Hughes on Crow. This extempore poem – typical of his book inscriptions for friends – was written for his publisher Richard Gilbertson in the Faber first edition of Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970), inscribed "To Richard from Ted 6th Oct 1970": the official publication date of this – possibly his most famous and controversial volume – being 12 October. Gilbertson was a bookseller who ran the private press at Crediton in Devon that published, inter alia, Hughes's Animal Poems (1967) and The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar (1970).