TERRY STREET

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. From the library of Professor Edwin A. Dawes, with his illustrated bookplate to the front pastedown. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. An excellent, fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents clean throughout. In the very near fine dustwrapper, just a touch faded to the margins of the pink rear panel and the upper edges of the front panel's lettering, and the merest rubbing to spine tips and corners. Not price-clipped (the publisher's £1.00 net sticker covering the original price). A lovely copy of the author's first collection.

Signed by the author in black ink to the title page. Douglas Dunn (b. 1942) read English at the University of Hull between 1966-9. During this period, Dunn will have known Philip Larkin as a librarian. The younger poet greatly admired Larkin's work and the latter was instrumental in bringing Dunn's poetry to the attention of Charles Monteith at Faber and Faber. In a letter (2 April 1968), Larkin notes "You may be interested to know that the Eric Gregory Committee (on which I sit) is giving £400 to Douglas Dunn, who is a small muttering bearded Scotsman of 26 studying at this University. [...] I believe [he] has some poems in with you at present, though he mutters so that I can never be quite sure what he is saying. [...] I showed his submissions to Day-Lewis, too, and he liked them, or so he said." In a letter to the poet, Richard Murphy, the following year when 'Terry Street' was in proof stage, Larkin writes of the poems, "well, I shoudn't know how to defend them, but I find them very likeable" (high praise from Larkin), and following the book's publication in October, he writes to C. B. Cox that "We have a new Hull poet now, name of Douglas Dunn: his 'Terry Street' has just come out from Faber's. [...] 'The Listener' called him 'the best poet since Seamus Heaney', which is like saying the best Chancellor since Jim Callaghan". Dunn would later work under Larkin at the library and they became friends, both sharing a love of jazz. This copy of 'Terry Street' belonged to Edwin Dawes (1925-2023), Reckitt Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Hull, later serving as the University's Pro Vice Chancellor, and Dean of Science. as well as Chair of the Library Committee. Dawes knew Philip Larkin in the latter's capacity as chief librarian at the university, and they soon became close friends, Dawes later a founder and chairman of the (posthumous) Philip Larkin Society. He was also an award-winning magician and historian of magic, which explains his Ex Libris bookplate showing an alchemist presiding over a steaming concoction with, at his left hand, a copy of Giovanni Battista Della Porta's 1558 'Natural Magick' (the figure bears an uncanny resemblance to Sigmund Freud). The design, he later explained, married his two passions of science and magic. ('Selected Letters of Philip Larkin', ed. Anthony Thwaite, London, 1992).