NORTH

First edition, first printing. Original light blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the dustwrapper, the rear panel reproducing Edward McGuire's striking portrait of the author. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth with a few pale spots to edges and spine. The contents, with the usual light toning to front endpapers, are otherwise clean and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the fine, unusually sharp and bright dustwrapper. Not price-clipped (£2.95 on the front flap). A beautiful copy. Scarce in this condition.

Heaney's engagement with, and treatment of, the politics of Northern Ireland – with "the Troubles" – was marked by a characteristic subtlety, intelligence and sense of responsibility to a subject that was at once personally and historically sensitive. It was in 'North', his fourth full collection, that he approached the matter most forcefully and unambiguously. Following two lyric poems dedicated to his his aunt, Mary Heaney, there are two extended sections, the first approaching the Northern Irish experience through the historical and geographical lens(es) of Northern European myth, ritual and violence (and including the extraordinary group of poems drawing upon Heaney's reading of P.V. Glob's study of the recently excavated, eerily preserved, ancient Bog People), the second containing a series of more personal poems. Christopher Ricks wrote of 'North that "by bending itself to deep excavations within the past of Ireland and of elsewhere, [Heaney achieves] a racked dignity in the face of horrors. The poems [are] truly enlightened". Published 9 June, 1975 in both hardback and paperback editions. The Faber archives do not record the number of copies that were printed. (Brandes and Durkan A12a.)