The School Bag. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. First Edition, First Issue. Pp xvii, 590. A fine bright copy in pictorial dust jacket.

Signed by Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes on the title page.

Poems that invite different kinds of historical and thematic reading resembling ‘a school of poetry’ gathered on traditional bardic lines: “And yet there was always going to be a personal element at work in selections because many of them would represent a homage to poets to whom we ourselves had ‘gone to school’ in one way or another from the beginning.”

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.