On its original appearance in 1966, forty years ago, Death of a Naturalist won the Cholmondeley Award, the Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.
‘The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection Death of a Naturalist is outstanding. His subject is those things which are inherent or inherited. What he praises is to be praised in his own work.’
Christopher Ricks, New Statesman
‘We confidently expect him to broaden his range and our imaginative estate.’
John Hewitt, Belfast Telegraph
‘The full-blooded energy of these poems makes Death of a Naturalist the best first book of poems I’ve read for some time.’
C. B. Cox, Spectator
‘His childhood landscape has acquired the validity of myth.’ Michael Longley, Irish Times
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Author biography
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. District and Circle, his eleventh collection of poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize.
by the same author
poetry
DOOR INTO THE DARK
WINTERING OUT
NORTH
FIELD WORK
STATION ISLAND
SWEENEY ASTRAY
SWEENEY’S FLIGHT
(with photographs by Rachel Giese)
THE HAW LANTERN
NEW SELECTED POEMS 1966–1987
SEEING THINGS
LAMENTS BY JAN KOCHANOWSKI
(translated with stanislaw baránczak)
OPENED GROUND: POEMS 1966–1996
THE SPIRIT LEVEL
ELECTRIC LIGHT
DISTRICT AND CIRCLE
THE RATTLE BAG
(edited with Ted Hughes)
THE SCHOOL BAG
(edited with Ted Hughes)
prose
PREOCCUPATIONS: SELECTED PROSE 1968–78
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE
THE REDRESS OF POETRY: OXFORD LECTURES
FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971–2001
plays
THE CURE AT TROY
THE BURIAL AT THEBES
Copyright
First published in 1966
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2009
All rights reserved
© Seamus Heaney, 1966, 1991
The right of Seamus Heaney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978—0—571—25073—8
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.