Death of a Naturalist [Signed] by HEANEY, Seamus (1939-2013) - 1966

New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. First American Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. First Printing of the poet's critically acclaimed first commercially published work (preceded by the privately printed pamphlet, Eleven Poems, in 1965), one of only 1,000 copies (bound from sheets purchased from Faber and Faber, Heaney's London publisher). Tall, slim 8vo: 57,[1]pp. Publisher's aquamarine cloth, spine lettered in gilt; typographic dust jacket, in salmon-pink, olive and white, lettered in black and priced $3.75. Signed by Heaney on the title page. A stunning copy, tight, square and likely unread; about Fine jacket, fresh and bright, with usual fading to the fugitive salmon-pink on bottom half of spine panel but all lettering undiminished. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, the Cholmondeley Award, the Eric Gregory Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Heaney received the Nobel Prize in literature, in 1995. Brandes & Durkan A2b. A collection of 34 poems largely concerned with rural life, often in the context of childhood experiences and the formulation of adult identities and intimate relationships. It includes "Digging," "Death of a Naturalist," "Blackberry-Picking," among others. "Seamus Heaney has been, for good or ill, internationally the most prominent and the most popular Irish poet of the latter part of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first. . . . His first two collections, Death of a Naturalist and Door into the Dark [a signed copy of which we also have on offer], largely written before the renewed outbreak of the so-called 'Troubles' in 1968, show Heaney alerting his audience to the violent history of colonisation on his native ground, but preoccupied also by the rhythms of life in a rural setting remembered from his childhood. He also, in a Wordsworthian manner, focuses upon the sources and resources of his own poetic voice and power." (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.