The Complete Poems

London: Chatto and Windus, (1969). First English edition, produced by offset from the third impression of the American edition, published October 29, 1970, and is the same as the first American edition except for the copy on the flaps of the dust jacket. The front inner flap of the English edition notes that the book was the "Winner of the National Book Award" and the jacket design is by Roxanne Cumming; the back flap is entirely different from the American edition, and quotes from reviews by Maurice Wiggin and Martin Dodsworth. One of 1000 copies printed. MacMahon A9(b1). Presentation copy, inscribed by Bishop on the title-page: "For Dorothee & Taylor Bowie - in exchange / for 50 lbs. of smoked salmon, among / other kindnesses - love, / Elizabeth Bishop". Bishop has corrected the text in three places and added a 6-word annotation at the end of one poem. On page 119, Bishop has scored through one word of text in "Song for the Rainy Season" and at the end of the same poem, on page 121, she has noted "Sitio Alcobacinha / Fazenda Samambaia / Petrópolis, Brasil". On page 177, Bishop has scored through two words of text noting in the margin "But no!" in "The Table", her translation from the Portuguese of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. And on page 207, Bishop has scored through one word of text, substituting "mean" in the margin. Dorothee Bowie, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle for over thirty-five years, was the assistant to the chairman of the English Department when Bishop taught there for the first time in 1967. Bowie became Bishop's best and most trusted friend, the person on whom Bishop relied to help her cope with the academic life for which she was entirely unprepared and ill-suited; or, as Brett Millier put it, Bowie became Bishop's "chief troubleshooter, devoted helper, and willing excuse-maker when drinking interfered with her (Bishop's) duties." - Brett Millier, Elizabeth Bishop, Life and the Memory of It (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), p. 377. Bishop and Bowie remained close friends until Bishop's death in 1979. Bowie's reminiscences are recorded in Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau's Elizabeth Bishop, an Oral Biography (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). Bowie's and Bishop's correspondence is now part of the Bishop Collection at Vassar College and was reproduced in part in One Art, Robert Giroux's edition of Bishop's letters. Very slightly bumped and rubbed at foot of spine and fore-tips, otherwise a fine copy in a lightly rubbed and dust-soiled jacket. 8vo, original blue cloth, dust jacket. Very slightly bumped and rubbed at foot of spine and fore-tips, otherwise a fine copy in a lightly rubbed and dust-soiled jacket.