Human Chain – Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, First Edition 2010)

This Faber and Faber first edition (2010) is of interest to collectors of Seamus Heaney first editions, contemporary Irish poetry, and Nobel Prize-winning literature.

About: A near fine first edition in near fine dust jacket. Cream boards clean and tight with no marks or wear; dust jacket bright and fresh with the bold red and dark grey Faber typography, a small nick to the head of the spine panel and a Faber barcode sticker to the rear panel, otherwise excellent. Text block clean and fresh throughout. An outstanding copy of Heaney's penultimate collection, published three years before his death in 2013.

Details:

• Title: Human Chain
• Author: Seamus Heaney
• Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 2010
• Edition: First Edition, first printing
• Binding: Hardcover
• ISBN: 978-0-571-26922-8
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Synopsis: First edition of Heaney's Forward Prize-winning penultimate collection, in the original Faber dust jacket. A near fine copy of an increasingly collectible title from one of the great poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Review: Seamus Heaney's Human Chain (2010) is a collection of extraordinary intimacy and retrospective power, written in the aftermath of a stroke Heaney suffered in 2006. The poems move between memory and the present, between the living and the dead, drawing on Virgil's Aeneid, early Irish literature, and the textures of Heaney's own County Derry childhood. It won the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection and stands as one of the most moving and accomplished works of his later career. Published just three years before his death in August 2013, first editions are increasingly sought after by collectors of modern poetry.