NEW SELECTED POEMS, 1966–1987

First edition, first printing. Original olive-green cloth lettered and ruled in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper which reproduces a lithograph portrait of Seamus Heaney by Louis le Brocquy. An excellent fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp, the contents bright and clean throughout. In the fine dustwrapper, showing the merest rubbing to corners and a shallow crease to the upper spine tip. Not price-clipped (£11.99 net to the front flap). A lovely bright example.

Appearing ten years after Heaney's first 'Selected Poems', this updated volume includes the poet's own selection of poems drawn from 'Death of a Naturalist' (1966), 'Door into the Dark' (1969), 'Wintering Out' (1972), 'Stations' (1975), 'North' (1975), 'Field Work' (1979), 'Sweeney Astray' (1983),'Station Island' (1984), and 'The Haw Lantern' (1987). The volume remains in print to this day, a companion volume – 'New Selected Poems, 1988–2013' – issued posthumously in 2014. "His is 'close-up' poetry—close up to thought, to the world, to the emotions. Few writers at work today, in verse or fiction, can give the sense of rich, fecund, lived life that Heaney does" (John Banville). (Brandes and Durkan A46a).