O’BRIEN, Edna. Country Girl: A Memoir (Signed by the author on the title-page)

London: Faber and Faber, 2012. First edition. Octavo. pp. 339. Publisher’s black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine, in the original pictorial dust-jacket. A very good copy in like jacket; light rubbing and slight creasing to jacket edges, small nicking at head of spine. Text clean internally; a faint vertical stain to fore-edge, not affecting the text.

A scarce signed memoir by one of Ireland’s foremost writers

A candid and deeply personal memoir by Edna O’Brien, charting her early life in County Clare, literary emergence, and eventual exile following the controversy surrounding her early fiction. Country Girl is widely regarded as the author’s definitive autobiographical statement, offering insight into both her own life and the broader cultural tensions of twentieth-century Ireland. The work includes reflections on friendships and encounters with leading literary figures, notably Philip Roth.

Signed copies of O’Brien’s later works are uncommon, particularly in first edition, and are increasingly sought after by collectors of modern Irish literature.

O’Brien (1930–2024) remains one of the most important figures in modern Irish writing. Her early works, beginning with The Country Girls (1960), were banned in Ireland for their frank treatment of female experience. Country Girl (2012) provides her most complete autobiographical account and has become a key text for collectors of Irish literary firsts. Signed examples, especially in presentable condition, are scarce in the trade.

[L3 6A]