COLLECTED POEMS

First edition, first printing. Original dark olive cloth with white lettering to the spine, in the dustwrapper with Sue Linney's drawing of Larkin to the front panel. A fine, bright copy, the binding tight and square, the contents clean throughout. Complete with the fine dustwrapper. Not price-clipped (£16.95 to the front flap). A particularly attractive copy of the first collected edition of Larkin's poems.

This posthumous collection, which presents all Larkin's published poems (and a selection previously unpublished) in chronological order of composition, was edited by Larkin's friend and fellow poet, Anthony Thwaite. It was later ousted by a less comprehensive (if more immediately user-friendly) edition, also edited by Thwaite, which printed the contents of each of the poet's four published collections intact, with some uncollected poems tucked away in appendices. Both versions have their adherents. Larkin arranged his slim volumes very carefully, so it's good to have the poems printed that way. This original edition, however, prints the date of composition at the foot of every poem (the dates drawn from the poet's manuscript notebooks), allowing the reader to witness the growth of a great poet. It includes an appendix indicating the ordering of the individual volumes, along with relevant page numbers. Published on 10th October 1988, 11,563 copies of this first impression were printed. Such was the appetite for a Collected Larkin, a further 8460 copies had to be printed later the same month (and another 12,700 the following month). (Bloomfield A19)