HEANEY, Seamus. The Government of the Tongue

The 1986 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings. London: Faber and Faber, 1988. Demy octavo. First edition. pp. xxiii, 172. Red papered boards, title in silver on spine. Inscribed and signed by Seamus Heaney for Robert Hamlin, dated 16 September, 1988. A fine copy in fine dust jacket.

In 1981 Heaney accepted a post as Visiting Professor at Harvard where in 1984, he was elected Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry. The T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures at Canterbury in 1986 were published with other critical writings as ‘The Government of the Tongue’ (1988) - a title which underlines Heaney’s conviction that poetry is a form of responsible government.