First edition, Bloomfield’s first state of the sheets in the second binding. The Less Deceived – Larkin’s ‘first mature collection’ (A. Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London, 1994), p. 188) – collected poems written over the previous decade, and had been originally titled Various Poems, which ‘Larkin feebly told his mother hadn’t been used lately’ (op. cit., p. 262). George Hartley, whose Marvell Press published the collection, encouraged Larkin to choose a more memorable title, which Larkin did by re-titling one poem ‘Deceptions’ and then using the poem’s original title for the volume. The collection had been advertised for subscription, and, once the 700 sets of sheets of the first edition had been printed, 300 sets were bound up in cloth with a flat spine, of which some 120 copies were sent to subscribers in November 1955 and the remaining circa 180 copies sold to the public.
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A favourable notice of The Less Deceived in a survey of the year’s literature in The Times on 22 December 1955 led to a surge in orders for the book, which was accelerated by the appearance of further laudatory reviews. This demand prompted the publishers to have the remaining 400 sets of sheets bound up in a second binding with a rounded spine (as here), and these remaining copies of the first edition had all sold by April 1956. ‘The publication of The Less Deceived […] marked the decisive turning point in Larkin’s career. Previously he had been almost no one, now he was someone; previously small presses had humiliated him, now one of them made him special; previously he had suffered his failures in solitude, now he was able to dramatize them for an audience’ (op. cit., p. 270).
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Bloomfield records that the 700 sets of sheets of the first edition have the error ‘floor’ for ‘sea’ on p. 38 (as here), and he also notes that ‘an unknown proportion’ of the 400 copies in the second binding were ‘described on the verso the title page as the “Second edition”, more properly perhaps a “second state”, which form part of the first impression’. This copy does not have the text ‘Second edition’ on the verso of the title-page and therefore forms part of Bloomfield’s first state of the sheets (the upper flap shows no traces of a later price-sticker over the printed price of ‘6/- nett’).
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This copy is from the library of the noted British engineer and designer Tony Divey, who worked for Lotus, DeLorean, Porsche, and other companies, before establishing his own business, Triking Sports Cars to manufacture and sell the Triking three-wheeled sports car which he had designed.
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B.C. Bloomfield, Philip Larkin (2002), A6(a).
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