"An epistolary cornucopia. The Letters of Seamus Heaney contains an abundance of insight and illumination, literary gossip and appraisal, playfulness and cogency, all bound up with a steadfast attention to the feelings and expectations of each correspondent. " --Patricia Craig, TLS "The portrait of Heaney that emerges in The Letters of Seamus Heaney , edited diligently and sympathetically by Christopher Reid, is of a man always tussling between duty and freedom." --Declan Ryan, Poetry Foundation "The 700-plus pages of The Letters of Seamus Heaney , beautifully edited by Christopher Reid, contain numerous fascinating themes and subplots. We see the poet, for example, first getting his hands on a copy of P. V. Glob's The Bog People , the book whose account of exhumed Iron Age bodies in Denmark would trigger "The Tollund Man" and, in time, half of the poems in North ." --James Parker, The Atlantic ".

communicates marvellously the encompassing personality and intelligence of this fine poet." --Seamus Perry, Times Literary Supplement , Books of the Year ". a comprehensive collection of letters which reveal a great poet at work, but also charts in engrossing detail the times he lived in." --Paul Perry, Irish Independent "A marvellous book, lovingly edited, beautifully produced. and brimming with literary insights, much laughter, a sprinkle of gossip and the poet's insuppressible joie de vivre, even in adversity." --John Banville, The Guardian.