HEANEY, Seamus Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996. London: Faber and Faber. 1998.
8vo. Original green paper-covered boards lettered in orange to the spine, in the dustwrapper reproducing part of the triptych Christ Carrying the Cross by Hieronymous Bosch; signed by Seamus Heaney in black ink to the title page; a fine copy in like wrapper.
A fine signed first edition, first printing of Heaney’s own generous selection of his own works.
Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 is as close to a Collected Poems as Heaney published in his lifetime and still the best way of approaching his work as a whole, including as it does a comprehensive, yet carefully chosen, selection from each of the poet's original slim volumes. The book concludes with “Crediting Poetry”, Heaney’s acceptation speech after winning the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded, in the words of the Swedish Academy of Letters, for his “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth”.
Brandes and Durkan A70a.
SKU: 2123720