A Girl in Winter

Census claim CONFIRMED: Faber & Faber, London, 1947 is the true first — Larkin's second and last novel, and his third book. The first American edition is St Martin's Press, New York, 1962, fifteen years later; the census's 1962 date is correct. Because the gap is so wide there is no simultaneity or precedence question at all: the St Martin's issue is a distant reprint rather than a co-first, and only the Faber 1947 is the collected first. Both editions are catalogued by dealers, but only the London first is collected as the first edition.