MURPHY, RICHARD The Archaeology of Love. Poems. Dublin: The Dolmen Press1955
Slim 8vo. Quarter linen blue paper boards with title lettering in black to spine, device to centre of upper cover. Housed in the original unprinted glassine wrapper with the original wraparound band announcing Murphy as the 1951 AE Memorial Award Winner; pp.28; Wraparound band split at one fold; minimal fading to spine; glassine wrapper torn to spine; otherwise near fine.
"You have netted this dawn/From a sea of night…" (p.26).
Richard Murphy was an Anglo-Irish lyric poet, who often demonstrated concern for recovering the Irish past. Murphy examines the consequences of one of the most pivotol events in Irish history in history The Battle of Aughrim (1968) which describes "Aughrim’s Dread Disaster”(1691); the final defeat for the Catholic forces attacked by the Williamites. It was then succeeded by the Treaty of Limerick, and the Penal period in which laws discriminated against Catholics in Ireland and Britain. Murphy's series was read by prestigious poetic names such as Ted Hughes and Cecil Day Lewis amoung others when it was broadcast in 1968.
Part of Murphy's Irish revivalist stance was his ownership of a fishing boat in Galway bay. He was responsible for restoring the boat himself: an enterprise that complements the subject of reviving lost history. Although born in the West of Ireland but spent much of his early childhood in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). An Archeology of Love is Murphy's very first book and reflects his early experiences in England and Continental Europe.
#2121147