Eleven Poems, housed in a custom Solander case

Seamus Heaney

Edité par Festival Publications, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, 1965

A propos de cet article

This is an impressively clean copy of the first edition, second issue of the first book by Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, housed in a custom Solander case Heritage Bindery. Condition of Eleven Poems and the original festival programme approaches near fine. Eleven Poems is crisp and complete with no appreciable wear and no creasing. Both original binding staples are intact and free of corrosion. The wraps binding shows only slight toning and trivial soiling to the perimeter. The contents are immaculate. This second issue of the first edition is identical in content to the first issue, but printed on white wove paper with the 10-point sun symbol on the front cover redrawn and slightly larger than in the first issue, and printed in a dark purple more closely matching the original programme print, rather than the brighter purple of the first issue. This sun-symbol device was used as the logo of the 1965 Belfast Festival. In the third and final issue, this sun-symbol device was not present, replaced with the herald with drum and trumpet device of the 1966 Festival. While the exact printing date is unknown, it was definitively before 3 June 1966, as a second issue copy signed and dated by the author thus is known. It seems is worth noting that the sun-symbol device on the original Festival programme more closely resembles that of this second issue of Eleven Poems than it does that of the first issue.This copy of Eleven Poems is housed in a custom clamshell Solander case build by Heritage Bindery. The Solander features quarter black Morocco goatskin spine, rounded and featuring raised, gilt-decorated spine bands framed by gilt rules, and gilt-decorated compartments. The marbled paper-covered sides, separated from the Morocco spine by gilt-rule transitions, feature beveled edges. The interior is trimmed in black cloth and lined in purple paper. Condition of the Solander is near fine, with only trivial hints of shelf wear to the marbled paper-covered sides.Seamus Justin Heaney (1939-2013) was the first of nine children born to a farmer and raised in rural County Derry "in suspension between the archaic and the modern." At Queens University Belfast Heaney evolved into a poet. In 1965 Heaney was a member of a group of young Belfast poets known as "The Group" when his first book, Eleven Poems, was published as a staple-bound pamphlet by Queen s Festival Publications to coincide with their 1965 festival. "I was part of the Belfast Festival committee at that time. The man behind it was Michael Emmerson… [who] had come to Queen s as an undergraduate from Stratford-upon-Avon and then had stayed on and developed the programmes until the thing grew to be a fully fledged arts festival…. When I suggested a pamphlet series to Michael, it was a done deal in a minute and the booklets were brought out with very little fuss. The first three are collectors items now of course: Derek Mahon s Twelve Poems, my Eleven and Michael s Ten. They look as if they were just xeroxed and stapled; but they were the start of something (Seamus Heaney, interview in Stepping Stones, O Driscoll, pp.83-84) Eleven proved a lucky number; in 1966, Death of a Naturalist, the eleventh and final poem in Eleven Poems, became the title of Heaney s first conventionally published book. Death of a Naturalist brought critical acclaim, earning Heaney the Cholmondeley Award, the Eric Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The next half century saw Heaney publish a dozen poetry collections, as well as prose, plays, and numerous translations. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". Reference: Brandes & Durkan A1b.

N° de réf. du vendeur 008011

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Eleven Poems, housed in a custom Solander case
• Éditeur: Festival Publications, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast
• Date de parution: 1965
• Reliure: Paperback
• Édition: First edition, second issue.