STATION ISLAND

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Publisher's original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the Pentagram designed dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean without inscriptions or stamps. All copies of this edition were bound without a front endpaper with the half title facing the pastedown. The dustwrapper is in fine condition without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped (£5.95 net to the front flap)

Signed and dated "June 1985" by Seamus Heaney on the title page. 'Station Island', Heaney's first volume after 'Field Work' (1979) is centred around its title sequence, "a sequence of dream encounters with familiar ghosts, set on Station Island on Lough Derg in Co. Donegal" (from Heaney's note). It stages a series of encounters with figures from the poet's own past, as well as encounters with earlier Irish writers, most notably William Carleton, Patrick Kavanagh and, at the end, James Joyce. The sequence, which owes much to Dante and frequently calls upon the Italian poet's trademark terza rima, is one of Heaney's greatest achievements. On either side of the title sequence are a section of lyrics and 'Sweeney Redivivus', a sequence in which the poet's voice once again (after the earlier 'Sweeney Astray' [1983]) merges with "the seventh-century Ulster king who was transformed into a bird-man and exiled to the trees by the curse of St Ronan."