LARKIN (PHILIP) Femmes Damnées, Sycamore Broadsheet 27, [limited to 400 copies], AUTHOR'S P...

LARKIN (PHILIP) Femmes Damnées, Sycamore Broadsheet 27, [limited to 400 copies], AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO BRUCE MONTGOMERY, inscribed 'To Bruce/ Who should have a copy of the original!/ Affectionately, Philip/ August 1978', and with a 2-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER to Montgomery loosely inserted ('Here at long last is dear old Femmes Damnées... I don't think it has worn too badly.. 'How does one try to get through the years from 50 to 70?', Well I certainly intend to try, but I expect they'll be increasingly gloomy'), single uncut sheet folded to form 3 panels, the 24-line poem filling the central panel and with a descriptive note on the third, housed with letter in cloth solander box with red leather title label on front [Bloomfield A11], tall 12mo (203 x 110mm.), Oxford, Sycamore Press, 1978 Footnotes: 'TO BRUCE - WHO SHOULD HAVE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL!' - PRESENTATION COPY OF 'FEMMES DAMNEÉS' FROM LARKIN TO BRUCE MONTGOMERY, WITH ACCOMPANYING LETTER. 'Femmes Damnées' was the third in a series of poems entitled Sugar and Spice: A Sheaf of Poems, which Larkin produced during his time as an undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford just after the War. Set in the ambience of a girls' school, the poems, along with several works of fiction and criticism which Larkin also wrote under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman, parodied the style of school stories popular at the time. However, 'Femmes Damnées' was the only one of these works published in Larkin's lifetime, and only then in 1978 when John Fuller printed it at the Sycamore Press. Larkin's friendship with the author and composer Robert Bruce Montgomery began at Oxford and lasted a lifetime. Montgomery dedicated his best known novel, The Moving Toyshop (1946) to Larkin, and the poet returned the favour with A Girl in Winter the following year. He would also submit his poems to Montgomery for comment and approval - something to which the poet is presumably eluding with the present inscription. The main Larkin-Montgomery correspondence is held by the Bodleian Library, and is due to be unsealed in 2035 when the full extent of their friendship will become clear. Until then, the present letter reveals a glimpse of what may be to come. Provenance: Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978), composer and author of detective fiction under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: • • Zero rated for VAT, no VAT will be added to the Hammer Price or the Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing