Books

First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "For Ray & Kitty, these spare-time fragments, with all good wishes, Philip". The recipient, Raymond Laurence Brett (1917-1996) was Professor of English at the University of Hull from 1952 to 1982, and he chaired the committee that appointed Larkin as University Librarian there in 1955. Following Larkin's death in 1985, Brett remembered how the two men worked together "almost daily" and quickly became friends. "At first I was impressed with the time he spent in his office, arriving early and leaving late. It was only later that I realised that his office was also his study where he spent hours on his private writing as well as the work of the library. Then he would return home and on a good many evenings start writing again... Poetry was not only the most important part of his writing, but an important part of his life for which he was ready to sacrifice almost everything else". High Windows is Larkin's final major poetry collection and includes his celebrated poem "This Be The Verse". "The first printing, according to Charles Monteith, sold out in three weeks, a record - in Faber's experience - for a cased volume of new verse" (Bloomfield). Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Cloth fresh, gutter partly cracked between first and second gatherings, but sound; unclipped jacket lightly toned, faint creases to extremities; a near-fine copy in near-fine jacket. Bloomfield A10a. R. L. Brett, "Philip Larkin: A Psycho-Literary Sketch", About Larkin, no. 7, 1999.

'High Windows' is the final collection of poems by Philip Larkin, published in 1974. It explores themes of existentialism, morality, and the human condition.