The Hard Life. An Exegesis of Squalor. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1961. First Edition. Maroon cloth boards, in pictorial dust jacket designed by Sean O’Sullivan. Jacket price-clipped. Some browning & chipping to dust jacket edges, spotting to fore-edge. Neat gift inscription to front free endpaper. Contents in very good condition.

Flann O’Brien’s fourth novel and the third to be published. He wrote ‘The Third Policeman’ in 1939, but it wasn’t published until 1967.