SWEENEY ASTRAY A Version from the Irish

Heaney Seamus

Published by New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1984

About this Item

First American Edition, INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, and with interesting provenance. 8vo, publisher s original brown cloth over mint green paper-covered boards, lettered in metallic green on the spine, in the original dustjacket. 85 pp. A very fine copy, the book and jacket both essentially pristine and mint, inscribed by Seamus Heaney on the title-page and with recipients ownership notation on front paste-down. INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION WITH INTERESTING PROVENANCE OF THE FIRST COMPLETE TRANSLATION OF "BUILE SUIBHNE" SINCE 1913, SIGNED AND DATED BOLDLY IN BLUE PEN, May 1985 on the titlepage. This copy is inscribed by Nobel-Winning poet Seamus Heaney to Basil Burwell, who has also written a note of ownership on the front pastedown. Burwell was a noted professor of Theatre Arts, and also a dramatist. This note was written when he was a member of the Irish Players of the Philadelphia Ceili Group. Later, he would found the Belfast Maskers, who perform in a building which now bears his name. "The poetry spoken by this mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature. Animated by love of place and exposure to elemental nature, its pristine images drew Seamus Heaney to the original, along with Seeney s attraction as a model of the poetic imagination itself. Sweeney Astray not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest modern poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature." - publisher. Seller Inventory # 33683

Bibliographic Details

Title: SWEENEY ASTRAY A Version from the Irish

Publisher: New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1984

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: 1st Edition