A GIRL IN WINTER

First paperback edition, first printing. Inscribed by Philip Larkin to Brynmor Jones. Original card wrappers designed by Berthold Wolpe. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Lightly creased to spine and corners. Rubbed to extremities and folds. Published 25 February 1965 in an edition of 10,000 copies, priced 7s. 6d.

Inscribed in blue ink to the front endpaper, "To Brynmor Jones / this product / of a misspent / youth / Philip Larkin". 'A Girl in Winter', published when he was twenty-five, was the second of Larkin's two early novels – following 'Jill' (1946) – and the first book he published with Faber and Faber who went on to publish all his major works (with the exception of 'The Less Deceived'). If Jill's portrayal of John, an Oxford undergraduate fresh from the provinces, refracts Larkin's own Oxford experiences, Katherine Lind, the young émigré (and, like the author, a librarian) at the heart of 'A Girl in Winter', is a subtler self-portrait: "[W]ritten when I was feeling pretty low, in [my] first library job [, it's] what Eliot would call an objective correlative. When I look at it today, I do think it's remarkably... I suppose the word is knowing... not really mature, or wise, just incredibly clever. By my standards, I mean." (Paris Review interview). His first fully achieved work, the novel exhibits a sureness of touch remarkable for someone so young, and clearly pre-empts the poems of his maturity. Indeed, John Bayley described the novel as "One of the finest and most sustained prose poems in the language". It was published, Larkin later recalled, "in the great freeze-up of 1946-7, in February – very appropriate in view of the title, almost like a cosmic publicity campaign. And I thought this was it, I'm made. But I could never write a third novel, though I must have spent about five years trying to. I felt a bit cheated. I'd had visions of myself writing 500 words a day for six months, shoving the result off to the printer and going to live on the Côte d'Azur, uninterrupted except for the correction of proofs. It didn't happen like that – very frustrating." (Bloomfield A3(c)).