The Rattle Bag. An Anthology of Poetry Edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Pp, 249. London: Faber, 1982. First Edition. Publisher’s yellow cloth boards, title lettered in gilt to spine, in pictorial dust jacket. Light fading to jacket, fore-edges spotted, contents in very good condition.

Presentation copy, Inscribed by Seamus Heaney on the front free endpaper, and with a two-line quotation from the poem ‘A Lie’ by Sir Walter Ralegh “Stab at thee he that will, No stab thy soul can kill,” dated ‘Cambridge, April 7, 1983.’ The poem appears on page 243.

An anthology of nearly five hundred poems containing the favourite poems of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, mostly in English but occasionally in translation, for general readers and students of all ages and backgrounds. Heaney & Hughes followed up with another anthology entitled ‘The School Bag’ published in 1997. Scarce in hardback, this is an exceedingly rare inscribed copy.

Friends for many years, Heaney spoke at Ted Hughes’ funeral in Devon on 3 November 1998, he said that no death had been as devastating to poetry as Hughes’ death, and no death outside his family had hurt him as much.