in the Department of Special Collections have been unfailingly helpful. Sarah Hepworth, Deputy of Special Collections, has been unstinting in her encouragement and advice. We are also grateful to Dr Sam Maddra, Project Archivist, for special help with the Veronica Forrest-Th omson letters; to Stella Halkyard of the the John Rylands Library in the University of Manchester for additional information; to Tom Leonard for guidance; and to Professor David Kinloch and Dorothy McMillan for copies of personal letters.

Lastly, we would like to thank Dr Helen Tookey at Carcanet Press for her positive support at every stage. And we are particularly grateful to the founder of the Press, Professor Michael Schmidt, for suggesting that two editors who had been taught by Edwin Morgan in diff erent decades would work happily in partnership on the letters that ran vitally alongside that memorable teaching. He was correct.

4 the midnight letterbox