THE MIDNIGHT VERDICT

Loughcrew, County Meath: The Gallery Press, 1993. First edition LIMITED to 1000 copies. This copy SIGNED AND DATED by the author/poet Seamus Heaney. 8vo, publisher's original black cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine, and in the original dustjacket. 42pp. A beautiful copy, as mint and pristine, the jacket equally perfect. SIGNED AND DATED BY SEAMUS HEANEY, RARE. ONLY 1000 COPIES OF THE FIRST EDITION WERE PRINTED. Heaney has signed this copy on the title-page and dated it April, 1994, just a few months after the December 14 issuance.
"The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman (c.1745-1805) and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid
Each of the translations in this book can be read on its on or as part of a triptych. By setting excerpts of Brian Merriman’s Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) within the acoustic of a classical myth (the story of Orpheus and Eurydice), Seamus Heaney provides a new and illuminating context for the eighteenth-century classic Irish poem. The idea of juxtaposing the three pieces came out of ‘a single impulse’, said the poet in his translator’s note. Each of the translations can be read on its own or as part of a triptych. By setting it within the acoustic of a classical myth, Heaney added a further chapter to his work as a translator and provided a new and illuminating context for Merriman’s classic work." - Gallery Press