First edition. Original black cloth lettered in gilt in pale dustwrapper lettered in black and red. The dedication copy, inscribed by Amis to his parents, "To my dear Mum + Dad, from is affectionate son, Kingsley (Pud.) November 1956" A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper.

The ultimate copy of Amis' fourth collection of verse, inscribed to his parents. Amis was an only child and was obsessively fussed over by his mother even into young adulthood and felt stifled by their bourgeois respectability. In fact, it would seem that whatever influence or instruction Amis received from his parents in his formative years, Amis the adult would choose to do the exact opposite. This self-enforced reactionary nature would inform his early writing as would the notable ordinariness of his family upbringing.
However, it is clear that his parents went to some lengths to ensure the best for their son,
"What my father had wanted me to be was, of course a version of William Robert Amis [Amis' father], a more successful version... and in my career too I was to have been a more successful version of him, for he got no further than a senior clerk's position and pay with the horrible mustard people [Colemans], and considered himself a failure. He was never bitter about this, but meant to see to it that I had a better chance than he." Kingsley Amis (Memoirs)
Amis maintained a cheerfully combative, but ultimately affectionate relationship with his parents as the dedication of this book and its attendant inscription suggests. When his Mother died in 1957, his father came to live with Kingsley and Hilary in Swansea and even coming with them on their tour of America in 1958/59.

Stock ID: 45190