The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue [Inscribed Association Copy]

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986. First Edition thus. `. Fine/Fine. First Omnibus Edition with a "new epilogue by the author." Tall, thick 8vo (235 x 147mm): [8],532pp. Publisher's French blue quarter-cloth over lighter blue paper-covered boards, spine lettered in gold; illustrated dust jacket priced $18.95. Inscribed by O'Brien to American poet Daniel Hoffman, poet laureate of the United States and chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and dated "Dec. 2nd, 1986" (the year of publication). Fine, square, and tightly bound; lightly read (if at all). Brilliant jacket without a hint of fading. O'Brien's momentous debut, banned in Ireland because of sexual content, "charts the progress of two young Irish girls, Kate and Baba, as they escape their rural home place for the relative cosmopolitanism of Dublin. It is no accident that, in the first novel, a turning point in Kate's development is marked by her acquisition of a copy of Joyce's Dubliners [Joyce was hugely influential in O'Brien's writing life, and in 1999 she wrote a biography of him ]. . . . When asked late in his life if he would ever return to Ireland, Joyce gave the famously enigmatic reply, 'Have I ever left it?', and Edna O'Brien's relationship with her home country is complicated in ways that are similarly fraught and complex." (The Literary Encyclopedia) Note: With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.