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Heaney, Seamus.
A Lough Neagh Sequence.
Publisher: Phoenix Pamphlet Poets Press, Didsbury, Manchester;
Date of Publication: 1969
Stock Code: 11950
Number 27 in a Limited Edition of 50 hand numbered copies only, signed by the author. Octavo, pp. [3], 1-11, [2]. Decorative roundel to final leaf and photographic portrait of the poet to verso. Publishers’ dark green moire cloth in white dust-jacket with roundel design below titles, price £1-1-0 to front flap and photograph with biographical sketch of the poet to rear panel. The exceedingly rare First Edition of Heaney’s second published book. A collection of seven poems which appeared first in the magazine “University Review” in winter 1967, and here printed as a preview of Heaney’s “Door into the Dark” collection published, with revisions, later on in the year. The Phoenix Pamphlet Poets Press series was founded to promote the work of little-known poets of quality, and this was the third volume in the series. With fifty copies issued ‘in boards’ there were also 950 unsigned copies printed in card wraps. Heaney, the influential award-winning and critically acclaimed Irish poet (1939-2013) was described in the Independent as “probably the best-known poet in the world” and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature much later in his career in 1995. This work is based around the life-cycle of the eels and the work-cycle of the fishermen of the Lough and is imbued with the folklore of the area, the turning of the seasons and the sacred and secular landscape of the largest lake in the island of Ireland. One of the rarest of Heaney’s works. Sold