Seamus Heaney - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1995 (22 books)

SEAMUS HEANEY (1939-2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." His many other awards include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), the T. S. Eliot Prize (2006), two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999), and the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry (2012).

Robert Lowell called Heaney "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others have echoed the sentiment that he was among the greatest poets of our age. Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world." Part of his popularity stems from his subject matter -- modern Northern Ireland, its farms and cities beset with civil strife, its natural culture and language overrun by English rule. His poetry is known for its aural beauty and finely-wrought textures. Often described as a regional poet, he is also a traditionalist who deliberately gestures back towards the "pre-modern" worlds of William Wordsworth and John Clare. All his main collections of verse are represented here.

Heaney also penned a number of important volumes of prose and literary criticism which address concerns taken up obliquely in his poetry. His first such collection, PREOCCUPATIONS (1980), includes critical work on Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Lowell, William Butler Yeats, John Montague, Patrick Kavanagh, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, and Philip Larkin. THE REDRESS OF POETRY (1995) contains a selection of lectures he delivered at Oxford University and FINDERS KEEPERS (2002) earned the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

As a translator, Heaney’s most famous work is the translation of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem BEOWULF (2000), referred to by Howell Chickering and many others as "Heaneywulf". Considered groundbreaking because of the freedom he took in using modern language, the book is largely credited with revitalizing what had become something of a tired chestnut in the literary world. THE CURE AT TROY (1990), his verse adaptation of Sophocles's "Philoctetes" about the Trojan war, was published to much acclaim and is well known for its lines:

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Heaney's belief in the power of art and poetry, regardless of technological change or economic collapse, offers hope in the face of an increasingly uncertain future. Asked about the value of poetry in times of crisis, Heaney answered it is precisely at such moments that people realize they need more to live than economics: "If poetry and the arts do anything," he said, "they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness."


The following books are in ePUB/MOBI format unless otherwise indicated:

Poetry

* DEATH OF A NATURALIST (Faber & Faber, 1991)

* DISTRICT AND CIRCLE (FSG, 2006)

* DOOR INTO THE DARK (Faber & Faber, 1969)

* ELECTRIC LIGHT (FSG, 2001)

* FIELD WORK (FSG, 1979)

* THE HAW LANTERN (FSG, 1987)

* HUMAN CHAIN (Faber & Faber, 2010)

* NEW SELECTED POEMS, 1966-1987 (Faber & Faber, 1990)

* NORTH (Faber & Faber, 1975)

* OPENED GROUND: Poems 1966-1996 (Faber & Faber, 1998) -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI

* SEEING THINGS (FSG, 1991) -- PDF

* THE SPIRIT LEVEL (FSG, 1996) -- PDF

* STATION ISLAND (FSG, 1985)

* SWEENEY ASTRAY: A Version from the Irish (FSG, 1984)

* WINTERING OUT (Faber & Faber, 1972)


Prose

* CREDITING POETRY: The Nobel Lecture (FSG, 1996) -- PDF

* FINDERS KEEPERS: Selected Prose 1971-2001 (FSG, 2002). -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI (PDF scanned by and reproduced here with the kind permission of @pharmakate)

* THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE: Selected Prose 1978-1987 (FSG, 1989) -- PDF

* PREOCCUPATIONS: Selected Prose, 1968-1978 (FSG, 1980)

* THE REDRESS OF POETRY (FSG, 1995)


Other

* BEOWULF: A New Verse Translation (Norton, 2000) -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI

* THE CURE AT TROY: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes (FSG, 1991) -- PDF