PHILIP LARKIN AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Fortune Press, (1945). First edition : in a secondary binding of pale green-grey boards, lettered up spine in gilt. His rare first book - a collection of thirty-one poems - "It is not likely that the edition exceeded 500 copies, which were never all sold" (Bloomfield). Although Bloomfield notes elsewhere that it was the habit of R. A. Caton of the Fortune Press to "bind up small quantities of any one title at a time using [different] binding cloths which he had acquired cheaply", he does not record any binding variants for the original printing of "The North Ship". This may suggest that the print-run was even smaller than usual (Bloomfield reports at least five different bindings for Larkin's "Jill" published by Caton in 1946), but that there is at least one such variant for "The North Ship" is evidenced by the present copy, which is plainly a later binding-up of the original sheets printed (on a mixture of papers) by S. C. Jennings & Sons in 1945, with the original highly fragile 1945/6 dust-jacket here price-clipped by the publisher and with an increased price of 12s/6d given on a sticker. A loosely inserted 1961 Blackwell's invoice suggests that they still had "new" copies in stock at that time.
Crown 8vo. [iv],(36)pp. Original grey-green boards, lettered up spine in gilt; a very attractive copy, clean and sound, in the original thin deep red dust-jacket, printed in black - lightly sunned, slightly nicked, with a couple of minuscule chips and an unobtrusive short tear, but still very good indeed. Bloomfield A1a.

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London : Faber & Faber, (1966). First Faber edition. His first collection - thirty-one poems originally published by the Fortune Press in a small edition in 1945 - here with an additional poem and an interesting 4pp retrospective essay by Larkin on his earliest poems and their publication.
Demy 8vo. 48pp. Original navy cloth, lettered down spine in gilt; very faint tanning of endpapers, but a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket - a Faber typographic design in grey, blue and black - just lightly worn at tips and very slightly tanned. Bloomfield A1(c).

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London : Faber & Faber, (1964). First edition. A celebrated collection of thirty-two poems and one of the high points of twentieth-century poetry. Loosely inserted is Poetry Book Society Bulletin No. 40 (February 1964) with Larkin's own essay on the genesis of the book - "the poems were written in or near Hull, Yorkshire, with a succession of Royal Sovereign 2B pencils during the years 1955 to 1963 ..." - as well as a previously unpublished Larkin poem, "Modesties".
Demy 8vo. (46),[ii]pp. Original purple cloth, lettered down spine in gilt; very good indeed in the original dust-jacket - a design in stone, green, red and black - just very faintly rubbed and faintly tanned at spine, with a faint crease at foot of lower panel, but also very good. Neat contemporary ownership inscription of A. A. Evans. Bloomfield A7a & C221.

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London : Faber & Faber, (1974). First edition. A collection of twenty-four poems, including "Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel", "The Old Fools", etc.
Demy 8vo (23cm). [ii],42,[iv]pp - including integral endpapers. Original grey cloth, lettered down spine in gilt; slight spotting to top edge, etc., but a very good copy in the original dust-jacket - a design in white, grey and blue - just very slightly tanned. Bloomfield A10a.

SOLD