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Book Mystery – Robin Skelton – The Hold Of Our Hands

A few weeks ago I picked up this book in a used book sale. It was privately printed in 1968 by the late Victoria poet, UVUC prof and wiccan priest (witch) Robin Skelton. It is titled The Hold of Our Hands and is subtitled Eight Letters To Sylvia. Sylvia was Skelton’s wife. One hundred copies of the book were printed. When I did an online search a number of copies of the book are available, all numbered and either signed by Robin or Sylvia Skelton or by both of them. This copy is neither signed nor numbered and I was just curious whi it wouldn’t be at least numbered?

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Cover page

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Book cover

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First poem/letter

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Number missing for book

4 replies on “Book Mystery – Robin Skelton – The Hold Of Our Hands”

It’s probably a printer’s extra, Don. I published a ltd. ed. numbered broadside with Frog Hollow in ’07 and have a dozen or more copies that are outside the numbered run. What you have might just be more valuable than the signed, numbered set, but I’d ask an antiquarian about that.

Yes, I agree it might be an extra, Don (and I think you mean “Skelton”, not “Skeleton”, though it’s an interesting typo! Is it a Pharos Press publication? That was a private imprint of Robin and Sylvia Skelton, usually printed by Dick Morriss at Morriss Printing. I don’t remember this particular book,though.

Oh, and I hadn’t waited for the images to completely load (I have a very slow internet connection…) so I can see now that the colophon doesn’t indicate that it’s a Pharos imprint. It has that nice clean Morriss look, that’s for sure. A real find!

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