Poet: Heathcote Williams
Publisher: Huxley Scientific Press, Oxford
Year: 2012
Size: 210 x 148 x 4 mm
Pages: 40, offset printed & perfect bound
Language: English
Foreword: Peter Whitfield
#90 of a signed & hand numbered edition of 100.
Signed by the poet for a second time in 2014
Condition: fine, except for some small stains on the inside of the cover
Postage & packing not included
…In Shelley, Williams has found his ideal subject. The rogue aristocrat who became an outcast from English society because of his wild ideas about political and spiritual freedom; the teenager expelled from Oxford after just six months’ residence, who, by a cynical sleight of hand, has been rehabilitated as part of the ‘cultural legacy’ of the university; the opponent of church, state, and monarchy, the advocate of vegetarianism, free love, and political revolution; the poet who was presented to the Victorian age as an ‘ineffectual angel’, rhapsodising over birds, clouds, wind, and ocean, but who in reality was consumed with anger at the misery and corruption of human life. Through Williams, Shelley speaks to us again, forcing us to ask what we have really achieved in the two centuries since he lived and died…
(from Peter Whitfield’s foreword)
John Henley Heathcote Williams, who changed his name into Heathcote Williams after his schooldays at Eton College, was born into an English upper-class family in 1941. Williams wrote his first book, The Speakers, about Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park at the age of 23. The book was praised and championed by Harold Pinter and launched Williams’s career as a writer, playwright and poet. In the 1960s and 1970s Williams developed into an activist in London’s squatters circle, an early graffiti artist, an environmentalist, and one of the subversive minds behind the underground magazine International Times. Through his poetry, plays and anti-commercial stance, Williams remained active as an environmentalist and irrepressible activist for social justice until his death in 2017.
Heathcote Williams’s prose poem Shelley at Oxford was published by Huxley Scientific Press, Oxford in 2012 in an edition of 100 signed and numbered copies. This particular copy is #90 and has been signed by the poet twice: once in 2012 and once in 2014. The condition of this copy is fine, except for a couple of small stains on the inside of the cover.