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Rare Seamus Heaney  Books 



The Midnight Verdict 
by
Seamus Heaney 

Price $1,550 Buy Now

Seamus Heaney 
The Midnight Verdict 

       Gallery Books - 1993. First Edition. Hardcover. limited edition of 1,000 copies 75 of which are numbered and signed by the author, and reserved for Patrons of the Gallery Press. Excellent condition, Very fine dust jacket. This copy is not numbered, but is Signed by Heaney. 
A Poet's Anxiety in Seamus Heaney's The Midnight Verdict

Seamus Heaney's The Midnight Verdict is a bold, ambitious—and neglected--

work. It is bold in structure: Heaney sandwiches an eighteenth century Irish comic poem between Ovid's account of Orpheus's loss of Eurydice (in book X of the Metamorphoses) and Orpheus's death (in book XI). Its ambition is implied in what Heaney observes of Merriman's The Midnight Court, from which he takes excerpts to compose The Midnight Verdict: it contributes to "the construction of a desirable civilization" (Heaney 1995, 57). No one has yet assessed Heaney's own contribution to the construction of such a civilization in Midnight Verdict, which is the aim of the present essay.

To compose Midnight Verdict Heaney draws on Merriman's Midnight Court. He borrows the female bailiff, who is a monstrous, threatening creature, the judge, Aoibheall, who ultimately condemns Merriman (a character in his own poem) to scourging as punishment, and the young woman who prosecutes the case. But because Heaney omits the defense by the male defendant, Midnight Verdict sounds less like a true court proceeding than Midnight Court, and more like a diatribe against males.

Heaney's choice of Ovid's narrative of the Orpheus myth over Virgil's conforms to this pattern of hostility. Unlike Virgil, Ovid gives the maenads a voice, and it echoes Merriman's prosecutor, hic est nostri contemptor! (XI 7). Ovid (Metamorphoses XI 1-43) devotes much more graphic detail than Virgil (Georgics IV 520-522) to the slaughter of Orpheus by the maenads. In addition, Ovid's narrative is more congruent with the comic mode of Merriman's Midnight Court than Virgil's. Ovid, like Merriman, "exploits almost every opportunity to circumvent pathos" (Anderson 475) by contriving a happy ending and inviting laughter to keep serious matters at an emotional distance. Ovid even manages to inject comedy into the killing of Orpheus with "un excès de logique" (Frécaut 169-170).

Heaney's essay on Merriman, "Orpheus in Ireland," helps us understand what Heaney is doing in Midnight Verdict. He sees in Merriman's Midnight Court two distinct ways in which the text contributes to "the construction of a desirable civilization." First, for the people of the eighteenth century the poem served the cause of liberation by opposing "sexual repression and a censorship obsessed with sexual morality." More recently, Heaney says, the poem has served the cause of liberation in a different way, as a "paradigm" of the movement to relocate women into the center of consciousness, language, and institutions (Heaney 1995, 53).

But Heaney undercuts both of these aims in Midnight Verdict when he associates Merriman's prosecuting women with irrational maenads (Bradley 483). We come closer to the heart of Midnight Verdict in Heaney's observation about reading Merriman's poem in company with Ovid's Orpheus narrative. We recognize, says Heaney, a "male anxiety about suppressed female power, both sexual and political" (Heaney 1995, 61). Support for seeing this "male anxiety about suppressed female power" at the center of Midnight Verdict comes from a suggestion Corcoran makes, that in fact we have a third Orpheus figure—after Ovid's Orpheus and Merriman—in Heaney himself, yet another poet who has been charged with neglecting women. Corcoran wonders if the publication of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 1991, for which Heaney had "responsibility," and which was vigorously attacked for its neglect of women (Bradley 483, Crowe), was not a "spur" to Heaney's composition of Midnight Verdict in 1993 (Corcoran 187).

But the question remains: Does The Midnight Verdict contribute "to the construction of a desirable civilization"? Yes and no. Yes, it helps that in The Midnight Verdict Heaney reveals for inspection a male anxiety that fears the consequences of its own acts of neglect. On the other hand, the text is hardly liberating—a favorite word for Heaney in "Orpheus in Ireland"—when, as Bradley notes, it sees women as crazed maenads. Indeed, in rehearsing gender stereotypes (as he does elsewhere, Brearton) without identifying them as such, Heaney makes his reader wonder if he has painted a sufficiently searching portrait.
I have 2 copies, both signed by Seamus Heaney 
​

 
Sweeney Astray.
by
Seamus Heaney 

Price $600 Buy Now


    Published by  A Field Day Press;- in Derry, 1983, - HEANEY, Seamus. Sweeney Astray . A version from the Irish. Derry: A Field Day Publication, 1983. First Printing. 1st. Issue;- Signed by Heaney in 1984 in Kilkenny;-  8vo, green card covers. The Nobel Prize-winning Irish author's translation of Buile Suibhne, the tale of Sweeney, a legendary medieval king of Ulster, "one of the major achievements in the canon of medieval literature" - 
Stunning copy of a very collecable book of poems. 
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish is a version of the Irish Poem, Buile Shuibhne written by Seamus Heaney and published in 1983. It is based on an earlier translation by J.G. O'Keeffe. Heaney's version was well received in many circles and, much like his later take on Beowulf,  has largely become the standard translation on college syllabi.

Sweeney Astray is a masterpiece on many levels: for the complex weave of its themes to the lyrical quality of its prose—accentuated greatly, of course, by Seamus Heaney's virtuoso translation. We follow mad Sweeney in his crazed wanderings through the forest and hills, torn within himself by his love of the wild and his incurable loneliness. The tale is presented as chunks of narrative interspersed with segments of poetry, their quiet, melancholy beauty evoking the sounds of windsong and rain.

The poem served as inspiration for a collection of photographs by Rachel Giese which was published, side by side with excerpts from the poem, under the title  Sweeney’s Flight. 
I have 3 copies, both signed by Seamus Heaney 

The Riverbank Field 
by
 Seamus Heaney 

Price $800 Buy Now

Heaney, Seamus 
The Riverbank Field 

       Loughcrew, Oldcastle Co Meath, Ireland: Gallery Books, 2007. Book. Illus. by Martin Gale. New. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). 1st Edition.  1st. Issue. Limited to 500 numbered copies, of which only 450 are for sale, signed by Seamus Heaney on the limitation page. This is 193;- Green cloth-covered boards. Colour paintings and drawings by Martin Gale. Plain dustjacket finished with mottled effect in green and white; fitted with protective sleeve. Both book and dustjacket are in very fine condition. Copy 193 is  Signed by Seamus Heaney to the back page. Stunning Copy. 
Virgil in Seamus Heaney's Human Chain
If Dante presides over Heaney's Field Work and much of his subsequent poetry (Corcoran 84), Virgil presides over the 2010 collection Human Chain.  The sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid—whose contribution to the collection has not been discussed—informs two poems, ten pages altogether, in the center of the collection.  "The Riverbank Field" points to a passion for life.  Death is the central theme of "Route 110," immediately following.  This paper makes three points:  that Heaney locates these two Virgilian poems in the center of Human Chain to make their centrality to the whole collection clear—they express an urgent vitality that acknowledges death without yielding to it, a vitality that is echoed by other poems in the collection; that in his remembrance of his father in "Album" Heaney draws on Aeneid VI once again, to balance the finality of death in "Route 110" with a kind of "resurrection,” and that Heaney explicitly establishes reception as a theme in both “The Riverbank Field” and “Route 110,” showing how he makes Virgil's Aeneid VI his own because it offers "images and symbols adequate to our predicament" (Preoccupations 56).

In "The Riverbank Field" Heaney draws on Aeneid VI to celebrate his native land as a place whose aesthetic beauty explains a passion for living.  Heaney begins by confessing that he cannot translate Virgil's account of Elysium without thinking of the world around him.  He shifts from the Loeb translation to his own words to make the poem fully his own, "And soul is longing to dwell in flesh and blood / Under the dome of the sky."  Here Heaney turns Virgil upside down to claim that Elysium is the world in which he lives, its sensuous beauty justifying life. 
I have 2 copies, both signed by Seamus Heaney ​

Door Into The Dark
by
Seamus Heaney
Price $900 Buy Now

Published by Faber and Faber, London, 1969​
Seamus Heaney’s second collection, Door into the Dark, was published in 1969. With the sensuousness and physicality of language that would become the hallmark of his early writing, its poems graphically depict the author’s rural upbringing, from the ‘fantail of sparks’ in the local forge to the eel-fishermen on the banks of Lough Neagh. It concludes with his iconic poem, ‘Bogland’, which evokes his native landscape.

‘Heaney has the gift of finding a new and consummate phrase to evoke physical qualities… The collection as a whole is a splendid achievement’ Richard Kell, Guardian
I have 2 copies, both signed by Seamus Heaney ​​

Death of a Naturalist [Signed]
by
Seamus Heaney
Price $1,500- Buy Now

Heaney, Seamus ~ Death Of A Naturalist : Signed By The Author Faber and Faber , London : 1966 The 1st. UK printing published by Faber and Faber in 1966. The BOOK is in Very Good condition. Some fading with a little pushing at the spine ends. Light rubbing to the edges The book has a very slight lean. A little dustiness to the text block edges. Light spotting to the prelims and end papers with a little spotting and light handling marks to some of the pages. Some mild age related mustiness. The original WRAPPER is complete and is in Very Good condition. Some wear to the upper spine end with a little loss. A light vertical crease to the rear panel. A little rubbing with loss at the corners. The usual fading to the spine and adjacent front panel area with light rubbing to the folds in places. A couple of very small closed tears to the rear panel edges. Light toning and marking to the rear cover edges. The wrapper remains very presentable in the removable Brodart archival cover. The book has been signed (without dedication) and dated (20th March 1967) by Seamus Heaney to the front blank end paper. Housed in a custom green clamshell box with gilt lettering and decorated paper interior. Despite its issues, this copy remains a very presentable copy of the author's first commercially published collection of poetry with a very early dated signature of the Nobel Laureate. Although Heaney would not win the Nobel Prize in Literature until 1995, 'Death of a Naturalist' won the young poet notable awards, including the 'Somerset Maugham Award', the 'Cholmondeley Award', the 'Eric Gregory Award', and the 'Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize'. Increasingly scarce to find with such attributes.

I have 2 copies, both signed by Seamus Heaney ​​

BEOWULF
By
Seamus Heaney 

Price $1,200- Buy Now
Published by Faber and Faber, 1999;- Signed by Seamus Heaney. In brown envelope packet had-written by Seamus Heaney to Jeffcock Glensensaw New Ross, Co Wexford 


Fine. 4th. Edition. Signed Signed By The Nobel Laureate Author, inside front cover by Heaney 2001. Crisply and prominently, in black ink that shows absolutely no fading (as opposed to the blue fountain pen ink renderings that are especially prone to lightening over time). Rare thus. A key and important book that has now become rather uncommon as a signed edition in the trade issue (by contrast, the signed limited edition format is relatively more common). The winner of the Whitbread Prize. Heaney composed his masterly translation of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem towards the end of the first millennium of our era, and has brought to life a work that is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his creative gift. A classic work of European literature, "Beowulf" is well established as a highly attractive book to collectors and of enduring appeal - especially so signed and in this issue. A superior copy, in excellent preservation. Fine in dust-wrapper. 


Beowulf, first printed in 1815, is an epic Old English poem that dates back to between the eighth and eleventh centuries. The author is unknown.


Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist, his first major published volume.