Bog Poems. Illustrated by Barrie Cooke. Printed by John Roberts Press, London, on Italian Paper. Bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe. Pp, 36. Bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe in quarter morocco with morocco fore-edge strip and line cloth boards lettered in gilt. Pale spotting to endpapers, otherwise a nice bright copy. Housed in publisher’s linen slipcase.

One of 150 Numbered Copies, Signed by the Author. The Work Completed in May 1975.

In Heaney’s second book of poems, ‘Door in the Dark’ (1967) the final poem of the collection, Bogland, declared his fascination with the peaty wetlands that are a unique feature of the Irish landscape. In other bog poems, like The Tollund Man and the Bog Queen, these ancient preservers of the past become for Heaney the archaeological links with the violent politics of modern Ireland. Some critics regard these early bog poems as Heaney’s chief legacy, eloquently examining the collective historical conscience, going below the more recent Protestant and Catholic hatreds into primeval Celtic behaviour, ‘domains of the cold-blooded,’ where stark evidence of a murderous past has been preserved in the timeless vegetal world of the bogs.

One of Heaney’s most beautifully printed books.