TERRY STREET

First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author to Frank Pike, drama editor at Faber and Faber. Original black cloth with titles in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents clean throughout. In the very good dustwrapper, a touch faded to the margins of the pink rear panel, with a number of nicks and short tears and areas of loss to spine tips. Not price-clipped (15s / £0.75 net to the front flap).

Inscribed by Douglas Dunn in black ink to the title page. "Milk I dislike and chocolates / bore me sick / But I like your whisky, Frank, / I like your whisky / — all the best / Douglas Dunn" [both the likes underlined for emphasis]. The recipient is Frank Pike, editor at Faber and Faber, and from the 1960s onwards responsible for the Faber drama list, recruiting Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray, Brian Friel, Sam Shepard, and Alan Bennett, among others, as well as working closely with authors already publishing with the firm, notably Samuel Beckett. In his Observer review of 'Terry Street', Ian Hamilton described Terry Street as "one of the most promising first books I've read for some time [...] offer[ing] more convincing sketches of at least the surfaces of humdrum urban living than one can find in any current poet except Philip Larkin." It was Larkin who brought Dunn's poetry to the attention of Charles Monteith at Faber and Faber. Following the book's publication, Larkin wrote 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." ('Selected Letters of Philip Larkin', ed. Anthony Thwaite, London, 1992).