Heaney Seamus. ELEVEN POEMS. Belfast Festival Publications, Queen's University 1965, 1965.

Price: US$7150.00 + shipping

Description: First edition, SIGNED BY SEAMUS HEANEY, the "second issue" with the sun illustration on the upper cover being ten-pointed and printed in near-black purple. 8vo, in the publisher's original printed cream paper wrappers, staple bound as issued, now handsomely presented in a fine fold-over box enlarged in thickness for greater shelf-presence and morocco backed with raised bands and gilt tooling. 16. A perfect copy, flawless, beautifully preserved and presented. A SIGNED COPY OF THE POET'S FIRST BOOK, EXTREMELY SCARCE IN ANY STATE THIS IS A FLAWLESS AND PERFECT COPY. There were only three issues of the work, and all were in very small print runs. The first has a nine pointed star printed in light purple on the white wrapper, the second is nearly identical but the star is ten pointed and printed in a much darker purple that is essentially black, the final issue was quite different, being wrapped in green paper with an entirely different design printed on them. The eleven poems included within include 'Death of a Naturalist', which would several months later be the title-poem for Heaney's first book published by Faber and Faber. The others are: 'Personal Helicon'; 'Mid-Term Break'; 'Follower'; 'The Diviner'; 'Peter Street at Bankside'; 'Waterfall'; 'Docker'; 'For the Commander of "the Eliza"'; 'Lovers of Aran'; and 'Scaffolding'. Ten of these poems would also appear in the later production by Faber and Faber.

Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.

Heaney, Seamus. Eleven Poems. Belfast Festival Publications, 1965.

Price: US$12476.56 + shipping

Description: Signed - First issue with a nine-pointed purple sun illustration to the cover. Original Publishers wrappers. p.p. 15. Signed by Seamus Heaney on the cover. Custom made solander box. Seamus Heaney, ever gracious and generous, signed this copy on my behalf at the Town Hall, Galway on the 24th April, 2013 prior to a joint reading of poetry with Michael Longley. At that time he stated he had not signed a copy of the first issue for years, so this copy is very likely to have been the last one he signed as he passed away on the 30th August 2013. A ticket for the Town Hall reading is also included which also included a reading by President Michael D. Higgins.

Seller: Healy Rare Books, Galway, Ireland

HEANEY, Seamus.. Eleven Poems.. Belfast: Festival Publications, [November 1965], 1965.

Price: US$22638.28 + shipping

Description: First edition, first issue (with the nine-point sun symbol), of Heaney's rare first published work, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the reverse of the front wrapper, "For Brendan & Pat: with every good wish, Seamus". The recipients, Brendan and Pat McCrystal, first met Heaney at their engagement party. The party was hosted by the principal of St Colmcille's Secondary School, Crossgar, Co. Down, and one of the English teachers, Marie Devlin, brought her then boyfriend (and later husband), Seamus Heaney. Both Brendan McCrystal and Heaney had links with St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast, and the McCrystals and Heaneys maintained a friendship throughout the 1960s. Heaney's first published work includes a printed notice regarding his "first book of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist', due from Faber, Spring 1966". Several popular Heaney pieces first appeared in Eleven Poems, including "Personal Helicon" and "Death of a Naturalist". In Heaney's 1995 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he stated "I credit [poetry] ultimately because [it] can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the water in that scullery bucket fifty years ago. An order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. An order which satisfies all that is appetitive in the intelligence and prehensile in the affections. I credit poetry, in other words, both for being itself and for being a help, for making possible a fluid and restorative relationship between the mind's centre and its circumference." In the opening poem of this debut collection, "Personal Helicon", Heaney prefigures the theme of his Nobel lecture by 30 years: "As a child, they could not keep me from wells / And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. / I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky. I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing". Brandes & Durkan A1(a). Octavo. Original wrappers, wrappers lettered in black, front wrapper with vignette in purple. Ownership label of Brendan & Pat McCrystal to front cover with minor loss to corner, some light browning throughout, some marks to covers, minor tears to head and foot of spine: a very good copy.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom