The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue. London: Jonathan Cape, 1987. First UK Edition. Pp 531. Blue cloth boards in publisher’s pictorial dust jacket. Light toning to top edge of boards & fore-edges, otherwise a nice copy.

Presentation Copy, Inscribed by the Author on the front free endpaper.

The Country Girls (1960), is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following the Second World War. It was followed by two sequels The Lonely Girl (1962), and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). All three novels were banned by the Irish censorship board and faced significant public disdain in Ireland. O’Brien won the Kingsley Amis Award in 1962 for ‘The Country Girls.’

The trilogy was re-released (first in America in 1986) in a single volume with a revised ending to Girls in Their Married Bliss and addition of an epilogue.