HEANEY, Seamus, and Ted HUGHES (editors). The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry. London: Faber and Faber. 1982.
8vo. Yellow cloth backed boards with gilt title lettering to spine, blue illustrated dust jacket; pp. 498; minimal bruising to bottom of spine with minor stains; very lightly toned to top edge; creasing to corners of dust jacket with a small tear to bottom left hand corner; otherwise very good; inscribed by Hughes ‘For Nick / after the bank – / The water / (Full of odd creatures / some fish, some frogs.) / from Ted / 10th Nov. 1982’ in black ink to front free endpaper.
First edition, inscribed by Ted Hughes with an intimate poem to his close friend Nick Grant.
In their introduction, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes explain that this anthology was intended not simply for readers who had ‘awakened in themselves a need to widen and confirm their poetry’, but to embrace forms of verse beyond the conventional literary canon. They deliberately included ‘a number of poems from oral cultures … which fill an emotional space that literary verse tends to leave empty’. The resulting collection brings together an extraordinary range of voices, from Blake and Shakespeare to Plath, alongside lesser-known poets and works in translation. Their selections offer a broad and highly personal conception of what constitutes profound poetry, and have helped shape subsequent readings of the poetic tradition.
Provenance: From the library of Nick Grant (d. 2018). Grant and Hughes were close friends and spent much time fishing together, as reflected in the inscription.
SKU: 2121048