The Darkening Ecliptic : poems by Ern Malley : paintings by Sidney Nolan. (Copy number 1 of the deluxe edition, with an original drawing by Nolan featuring Ned Kelly)

Preface by Robert Melville. Introduction by Elwyn Lynn. [London] : R. Alistair McAlpine, 1974. Limited edition of 1000 copies, THIS ONE OF ONLY 50 COPIES OF THE DE-LUXE EDITION WITH AN ORIGINAL SIGNED DRAWING BY SIDNEY NOLAN, this numbered 1/50, signed on the title page by Sidney Nolan, Robert Melville and Elwyn Lynn. Quarto, with a further gift inscription ‘To Tom’, cloth with pictorial dust jacket lightly rubbed and stained), pictorial endpapers, 56 pp, colour illustrations. The poems of Ern Malley, the fictitious poet created by Harold Stewart and James McAuley in 1943 in order to discredit Max Harris, editor of Angry Penguins, are accompanied by twenty-four reproductions of Nolan’s Caran D’ache (pencil) drawings from the artist’s Bonython Gallery series of 1973. Nolan elected to draw in the copy we offer here a Caran D’ache illustration which relates to the Ern Malley poem in this publication, Baroque Exterior (p.43). The drawing, in blue, brown, and red, features Nolan’s most iconic motif, the Kelly helmet, along with his equally distinctive images of Boy in Moon and Mrs. Fraser, and occupies approximately 290 x 150 mm on the front free-endpaper and is signed by Nolan.