LARKIN, Philip (1922-85). The North Ship, London, 1945, 8vo, original black cloth, dust-jacket. FIRST EDITION of the author's first book. Bloomfield A1a: "... it is not likely that the edition exceeded 500 copies."

LARKIN, Philip (1922-85).  The North Ship. London: The Fortune Press, 1945, 8vo (188 x 130mm). Half title (some light spotting, more pronounced to the last few leaves). Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, uncut, red dust-jacket lettered in black, price label of 10/6 laid down on front turn-in (head of cloth spine a little bumped, small piece torn away from head of backstrip of jacket without loss of letters, corners chipped, backstrip a little faded, turn-ins clipped without loss of letters). Provenance: William Van O'Connor, California (label on front pastedown). FIRST EDITION of the author's first book, with a significant provenance. William Van O'Connor (1915-66) attended Syracuse and Columbia Universities. He had a wide-ranging academic career, teaching English literature at the Universities of Minnesota (1946-62) and California (1962-66), and including time at the University of Hull (1964-65) where he would have met Larkin who was chief librarian at the Brynmor Jones library in the same university. "Larkin's reputation as a poet did not, in fact, begin with The North Ship, which on its first appearance was hardly noticed. It was with the publication of The Less Deceived, late in 1955 when he was thirty-three, that he began to be recognised. By the time he died thirty years later, he had become one of the best-known poets in the English-speaking world, and one of the best loved" (from Anthony Thwaite's introduction to the Collected Poems (1988)). Bloomfield A1a: "... it is not likely that the edition exceeded 500 copies."