O’Brien, Edna ~ The Country Girls : Signed By The Author

Hutchinson & Co., London: 1960

The First UK printing published by Hutchinson & Co., London in 1960. 8vo., Publisher's black boards, lettered in gilt to spine with device to the foot and contrasting blue painted label gilt to the upper portion; together in the unclipped pictorial wrapper (15s net to front flap) designed by Jillian Willett; The BOOK is in Very Good++ condition. A slight shelf lean with some minor creasing and bumping to the spine. A couple of small bumps to the upper edge and corner of front board. Some light offsetting and spotting to the blank end-papers and prelims. Light toning and spotting to the text block;. One small ink smudge to the verso of the front blank end-paper. THE WRAPPER is complete and is in Very Good++ condition. A little toned and rubbed along the folds, with nicks and small losses to the ends of the spine and folds. A couple of short closed tears, repaired to the verso with one portion of white tape. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. The author's scarce debut novel. This copy has been inscribed by the author to the title page 'To Bob Castle, Edna O'Brien'. 'The Country Girls' is perhaps O'Brien's best known work, and is the first in a trilogy of novels which was closely followed in 1962 by 'The Lonely Girl' and in 1964 by 'Girls in Their Married Bliss'. Born into a strict Roman Catholic family and sent away to boarding school from a young age, O'Brien described her early life as 'enclosed' and 'suffocating'. After obtaining her licence as a pharmacist, she began working as a reader for Hutchinson, and it was during her time at the publisher that she began to consider writing her own novel. Inspired by the works of such writers as Thackery, Fitzgerland, and perhaps most influentially, Joyce (of whom she would later write a biography), she based her first book on her own personal experiences of growing up in rural Ireland, with the plot following two childhood friends, Caithleen and Bridget, as they escape the confines of their convent in search of bigger and better things in the country's capital city. Famed now for its themes of liberation, frank portrayal of social issues during a particularly repressive period in post-war Ireland, and in particular for its unashamed descriptions of sex and liberation, the book was perhaps unsurprisingly denounced in churches, placed on the censorship index and banned throughout the country for 'corrupting the minds of young women'. Some reports at the time even claimed that it was subject to burnings in churches. 'I felt no fame', O'Brien later said of the time, 'I was married. I had young children. All I could hear out of Ireland from my mother and anonymous letters was bile and odium and outrage'. The ban was not lifted until 1987. 'The Country Girls' is not the novel that broke the mould', novelist Eimear McBride later wrote, 'it is the one that made it… O’Brien gave voice to a previously muzzled generation of Irish women.'. Now regarded as a groundbreaking work which unapologetically champions women's personal freedom, it is now increasingly difficult to find this title in the iconic wrapper with such attributes.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good++
JACKET: Very Good++