First edition, first state of the dustwrapper. ‘J.G. Farrell has created a brilliant and memorable character in Boris. An ageing cynic, touching and turbulent, and an arid English seaside resort are brought effortlessly to life and idiosyncrasy. The strength and versatility of J.G. Farrell’s prose makes of Boris, his disasters and desolation, an intense and living world of comedy and pathos’ (dustwrapper blurb). Farrell was at the time, as the author profile on the rear dustwrapper flap explains, ‘living in the United States on a Harkness Fellowship. […] The Guardian described Farrell as “an exuberantly gifted writer” with “sure signs of the developing powers of a considerable talent”’.

The Times reviewed the book with bemusement about its ‘typographical eccentricities – in appearance rather like the Mouse’s Tale in Alice in Wonderland’ but concluded that this was ‘more than compensated for by the comedy, by the sharpness of observation, and by the almost Nabokovian obsession with minutiae’ (17 August 1967, p. 5). A Girl in the Head was published at 22s. 6d., and later states of the dustwrapper have been clipped to remove this printed price, which is replaced with a price-sticker on the upper flap.

Ralph J. Crane, ‘J.G. Farrell: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources’, in Ralph J. Crane, ed., J.G. Farrell: The Critical Grip (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999, I, A4.

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For our catalogue of J.G. Farrell's works in first edition, please visit our website: www.typeandforme.com