LARKIN, Philip. The North Ship. London: The Fortune Press. 1945.
8vo. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dust-jacket; fragile jacket laminated and nicked to edges and corners with areas of loss to upper edge of rear panel (c. 1.5 x 2 cm) and lower spine edge (c. 1 cm); with faintly visible blind stamp to front panel of the wrapper: ‘[Swin]ton & Pendlebury…’, but neither book nor wrapper show signs of library ownership; a very good copy, the binding firm, cloth and gilt fresh, and contents bright and clean, in a good wrapper.
First issue of the poet’s first book, in a sound example of the scarce dust-jacket.
Larkin became a harsh critic of his first book. ‘Looking at the collection today’, he wrote in the introduction he provided for a 1966 Faber reissue, ‘it seems amazing that anyone should have offered to publish it without a cheque in advance and a certain amount of bullying’. Although he was keen to point out the volume’s ‘search for a style’ and clear debts to Auden, Dylan Thomas and, predominantly, Yeats, there are clear signs here of the poet’s own emerging voice.
Bloomfield Ala.
SKU: 2121576