HEANEY, Seamus. Door into the Dark. London: Faber and Faber. 1972.
8vo. Publisher’s black cloth ruled and lettered in gilt to spine, original typographic dust jacket with printed price of 15s to front flap; pp. 56; sunning to jacket especially to the spine with some soiling to whites of jacket, 1cm closed tear to front cover, slight bump to back board’s top left corner, some very light markings to back board; near fine.
Signed first edition.
The poems collected here expand upon the themes Heaney developed in his first Faber and Faber collection, Death of a Naturalist. Later, in Stepping Stones, Heaney noted that “No poems were held over [from Death of a Naturalist] … From then on, it was start-again time.” Indeed, the following years in which the poems were written, 1965 to 1969, were rather tumultuous both politically and culturally. Heaney was thirty by the time the collection was published, married with two children, and living in rented accommodation in Belfast while teaching in the English department at Queen's University. The title is taken from “The Forge”, a poem which is set in the Blacksmith's workshop on Castledawson's Hillhead Road.
"With the sensuousness and physicality of language that would become the hallmark of his early writing, these poems graphically depict the author's rural upbringing, from the local forge to the banks of Lough Neagh, concluding in the preserving waters of the bogland and a look ahead to his next book, Wintering Out (1972)." (Faber and Faber).
This copy is signed by the author in black ink to the title page.
#2120447