Death of a Naturalist. New York: Oxford University Press,1966. First American Edition. Pp, 57. Green cloth boards and original dust jacket of olive, salmon and white, lettered in black. Light fading to lower portion of jacket, price-clipped; neat gift inscription to front free endpaper, the book in fine bright condition.

The first American edition (June 1966) of Seamus Heaney’s first major work in hardback & the author’s first commercially published work. It was published by Faber & Faber in London in May 1966. A year earlier he published a collection in wrappers entitled ‘Eleven Poems’ while still a student in Queen’s University, Belfast.

It earned the Heaney the E.C. Gregory, the Cholmondeley and the Somerset Maugham awards as well as the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

It has now come to be recognised as one of the most significant collections of poetry in modern times.

[Brandes A2].