MILLER, Karl; Andrew O’HAGAN (preface); [HEANEY, Seamus]. Tretower to Clyro: Essays.

MILLER, Karl; Andrew O’HAGAN (preface); [HEANEY, Seamus]. Tretower to Clyro: Essays. London: Quercus. 2011.

8vo. Original dark green cloth, titles in gilt to spine, in dust jacket; pp. [viii], 232; extremities of jacket a little rubbed, slight cockling to outer margin of pp. 7-16, else a near fine copy; authorial inscriptions “For Andrew, with best wishes, Karl Miller”, “Hello Andrew, all the best, Andrew O’Hagan”, “Seamus Heaney” in black in to title (see below).

A lovely triple-signed first edition copy of this late volume of essays by the great literary scholar and critic Karl Miller, inscribed by Miller, Andrew O’Hagan and Seamus Heaney, the trio of friends who feature in, and contribute to, the book.

The great Karl Miller was literary editor of the Spectator, New Statesman, editor of The Listener, and founding editor of the London Review of Books. From 1974 to 1992, he was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, a department he famously transformed along with Frank Kermode. His books include Cockburn's Millennium (winner of the James Tait Black memorial prize), Doubles, Authors, a life of James Hogg, and two volumes of autobiography. This range and scope is reflected in the essays collected in Tretower to Clyro.

There are essays on Anglo-Welsh borderlands (home to Francis Kilvert and Raymond Williams), on Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, lan McEwan, Alistair MacLeod, Alice Munro, John McGahern, Anne Tyler, and a number of pieces on Scottish subjects. Andrew O’Hagan’s extended Foreword records a series of countryside excursions made with Miller and Seamus Heaney (the trio are pictured together).

This copy, with a ticket to the event at the 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival loosely laid in, is a lovely memento of the friendships movingly recounted in the book.

SKU: 2123151