Lot Essay
The final 5 poems are unrecorded in Keynes. The others were first published in The Tasking, limited to 100 copies, privately printed for the author by Cambridge University Press, 1954 [Keynes A56]; they were collected in the first ordinary edition in 1956, under the title Sequences. 'Neighbours' was first published in John O'London's Weekly, vol. LXIII, no. 1574, 10th December 1954, p.902 [Keynes C.307], and then in New Poems 1958, ed. by Bonamy Dobrée, Louis Macneice, and Philip Larkin (Michael Joseph, 1958) [Keynes B32].
In a letter to Felicitas Corrigan, dated 30 December 1952, Sassoon wrote: 'H.M.T. assures me that these little pieces are alright -- "stellar thoughts" he calls them, and urges me "never to doubt one twinkle of a star"; and in another, dated 27 March 1962, he adds: 'No one else except H.M. Tomlinson who died in 1958, has seen this book. I feel doubtful about bombarding your mind with this collection, so lay it aside if you don't feel able to face it ... There are a few ... sardonic epigrams and so on which may entertain you' (cf. D. Felicitas Corrigan Siegfried Sassoon: a Poet's Pilgrimage, London, Victor Gollancz, 1973, pp. 146 and 163).
In a letter to Felicitas Corrigan, dated 30 December 1952, Sassoon wrote: 'H.M.T. assures me that these little pieces are alright -- "stellar thoughts" he calls them, and urges me "never to doubt one twinkle of a star"; and in another, dated 27 March 1962, he adds: 'No one else except H.M. Tomlinson who died in 1958, has seen this book. I feel doubtful about bombarding your mind with this collection, so lay it aside if you don't feel able to face it ... There are a few ... sardonic epigrams and so on which may entertain you' (cf. D. Felicitas Corrigan Siegfried Sassoon: a Poet's Pilgrimage, London, Victor Gollancz, 1973, pp. 146 and 163).