Death of a Naturalist. New York: Oxford University Press,1966. First American Edition. Pp, 57. Green cloth boards and original dust jacket in olive, salmon and white, lettered in black. Light rubbing to jacket edges & small closed tear to lower margin of front wrapper. Book in fine bright condition.

Heaney’s first major work in hardback & the author’s first commercially published work. 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].