POETICAL WORKS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD

Philip Larkin's personal copy of the collected poems of Matthew Arnold. A reprint of the September 1890 'first complete edition'. Publisher's original green cloth with gilt titles to the spine. Portrait frontispiece. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt bright and with a few small marks. The contents, with Philip Larkin's tipped in University of Hull 'private collection' bookplate to the front endpaper (the endpaper clipped at the upper corner), a small paper Dublin bookseller's label to the front and rear pastedowns, some pencilled notes to the rear pastedown with corresponding pencil marks to the margins of the poems to which they refer, and some spotting to the endpapers, are otherwise clean throughout.

From the personal collection of Philip Larkin with his signed 'personal collection' University of Hull library bookplate tipped in at the front endpaper. A pleasing, poetic association copy. In a letter dated 23rd June 1941 to his childhood friend (and later the dedicatee of 'Jill'), James Ballard Sutton, Larkin writes "... After all, poetry is a thing depending almost entirely on words. There are Shites, of course, who think it does (first stage fuckers) and spend all their time (Maugham!!!) juggling with 'richly brocaded' words. These men are shit-pans, comepots and toss-bottles. Then you get the intellectual fuckers (M. Arnold) who say 'Poetry is written with ideas'. Their obstreperous failures cover pages of literary history". (Twaite, Anthony edits: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, p.17)