MCGAHERN, John ~ The Collected Stories. Signed, lined and inscribed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Faber and Faber, London: 1992.

8vo., brown publisher's boards, spine lettered in cream with publisher's device to foot; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (£14.99) featuring a detail from the Book of Kells; THE BOOK an excellent copy, a touch pushed to spine ends; pages lightly toned, else near-fine; THE WRAPPER just a touch rubbed at edges, else also near-fine. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition. This copy inscribed by the author to the title page: "For Geraldine McDonald / with affection / John McGahern / 1992". The author has also penned the quotation "They were coming into country that they knew. They had suffered here" with his initials beneath, to the top of the title. A collection of 34 short stories from the highly-acclaimed Irish author John McGahern (1934 – 2006), one of the most important Irish writers of his generation. Born in Dublin, McGahern was raised by his mother, a schoolteacher, and his father, a police sergeant. When his mother died of cancer in 1944, the family were uprooted, and his father, already a volatile man, became more and more prone to outbursts of physical abuse. McGahern's first novel 'The Barracks', was a semi-autobiographical account of his early years living and working in rural Ireland, but it was his second, 'The Dark', which caused the most controversy. Taking as its focus a coming-of-age story between a boy and his widowed father, it was immediately banned upon publication by the Irish Censorship Board for its depictions of sexual abuse. The resulting scandal led to McGahern's dismissal from his teaching job at Scoil Eoin Báiste. As well as novels, McGahern also published a number of short story collections, of which this was the fifth. Many of the stories here reproduce those in his previous volumes Nightlines (1970); Getting Through (1978); The Stoat (1978); and High Ground (1985), though some appear in a different format. There are also two new additions: 'The Creamery Manager' and 'The Country Funeral'. The Guardian writer Richard Pine writes in his obituary of the author that he was 'arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett', whose early autobiographical novels "had already set the tone for his major themes: domestic interiors (in every sense of the word), the relationships of men to women and of parents to children, and the mindscape of traditionalist rural Ireland." Today, McGahern is perhaps best remembered for his 1990 novel 'Amongst Women' which revolves around the character of a tyrannical father and former IRA leader. A wonderful copy, scarce with these attributes. The quotation is taken from ''The Country Funeral', and appears on page 381.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine