Seamus Heaney: A Portrait in Letters

An admirable undertaking, as impressive for its scholarship as its sympathy. Heaney is presented here at the centre of a worldwide network of correspondents, and what emerges is a vivid sense of both the great writer and the living man.

(Seamus Perry, Fellow of Balliol College and Tutor in English Literature, Professor of English, University of Oxford)

I just finished reading it. I found it very touching; Heaney's influence on such a wide circle of correspondents comes through with great force.

(Professor Marc Mulholland, Senior Tutor, St Catherine's College, Oxford)

Seamus Heaney wrote hundreds of letters and postcards in long hand, answering almost all the letters he received from friends, fellow poets, university professors, arts councils and of course from ordinary fans. He was not only a master of English prose and poetry, but was also highly skilled in the art of writing letters.

The author has selected fragments and parts of this vast correspondence to show how we can see the portrait of the man himself from the way in which he interacted with others.