Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot first edition 1942 *Charlotte Bawden's copy AL*

Little Gidding - First Edition - Charlotte Bawden's Copy with Artist's Letter
 
ELIOT, T. S. Little Gidding. London: Faber and Faber, 1942.
 
First edition, first issue, in the original sewn binding, preceding the later wire-stitched issue. 16pp. Original mulberry printed wrappers. An excellent copy, the wrappers clean and fresh with the characteristic fading to the spine, otherwise very good. Gallup A42. Charlotte Bawden's copy, with her ownership inscription "C. Bawden" in ink at the head of the upper wrapper.
 
Laid in is a two-page autograph letter to Charlotte Bawden, dated 13 April 1968 and written on headed paper from Winterbrook House, Harwell, by the artist and art teacher Molly Freeman (Nee  Laura Mary Dudley-Short). The letter is substantially concerned with art and art education, discussing proposed talks, paintings, the Tate Gallery, coloured slides and asking Charlotte's advice on the arrangements. Old horizontal fold and a small corner crease, otherwise very good.
 
Charlotte Bawden, born Charlotte Epton (1902-1970), was an artist, potter and teacher. She trained at the Royal College of Art, subsequently worked with Bernard Leach at St Ives and Michael Cardew at Winchcombe, and exhibited during the late 1920s and 1930s. She married her fellow RCA student Edward Bawden in 1932 and became part of the remarkable artistic circle associated with Great Bardfield. Little Gidding was the fourth and final poem of Eliot's Four Quartets. It first appeared in The New English Weekly in October 1942 before this first separate edition was issued by Faber later the same year.