The Country Girls

Hutchinson (London), 1960, is the true first; the novel was banned by the Irish censorship board on publication and added to a list of over 1,600 banned titles. Alfred A. Knopf published the first American edition in New York — the year is usually given as 1960, but it could not be corroborated against two independent sources here and should be treated as unconfirmed. The Hutchinson London printing is the precedence copy in any case, and the Knopf is properly described only as the first American edition. Note that the Jonathan Cape imprints belong to the sequels (The Lonely Girl, 1962; Girls in Their Married Bliss, 1964), not to this title — a Cape 'Country Girls' is not the first.