Lot 24
Larkin, Philip
XX Poems
Auction: 16 June 2026 from 10:00 BST
Description
[Belfast: Carswells], 1951. First edition, one of 100 copies, privately printed for the author, 4to (20.8 x 16cm), [20] pp., original printed wrappers bound with two staples, staples rusted, wrappers faded and dust-soiled, lower fore corner lightly bumped, two rust-stains on front wrapper showing through to dedication leaf, faint pencil annotations to rear wrapper [Bloomfield A4]
Provenance
From the library of W. J. Harvey (1925-1967), literary critic; thence by descent.
W. J. Harvey studied at the University of Oxford before holding academic posts including professor of English at Queen's College, Belfast, where he taught Seamus Heaney, who after Harvey's death instigated the publication of his book of poems, Descartes' Dream, which appeared in 1973. He is best remembered for his 1965 work Character and the Novel, recently identified in The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel (2010) as one of two ‘exemplary humanistic accounts of novelistic character’, alongside John Bayley's The Characters of Love.
Footnote
Larkin's very rare second book of poetry, after The North Ship (1945), and his fourth book overall, which he had privately printed while working as a sub-librarian at Queen's College Belfast. Many of the poems are here untitled, identified instead by roman numerals, but include some of his best-loved pieces, such as ‘Wedding Wind’ and ‘At Grass’. ‘It was Belfast that saw, as Larkin later acknowledged, his breakthrough as a poet. Within a few months he wrote some of his best and best-known poems. He had little immediate success with them, and fell back on publishing at his own expense 100 copies of a pamphlet, XX Poems, set up by a local printer in 1951’ (ODNB). According to Larkin's bibliographer, ‘most of the copies were sent by the author to prominent literary figures who generally did not acknowledge receipt, insufficient stamps having been put on the envelopes because postage rates had just been raised’ (Bloomfield).