Seamus Heaney's The Settle Bed Christmas Card: Rare Book of the Week

Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney was a dedicated sender of Christmas cards and for more than 30 years produced his own.

Coming up at Fonsie Mealey's December 11-12 Rare Book and Collector's sale is his 1989 card including his poem The Settle Bed, privately printed by his friend Peter Fallon of The Gallery Press, and inscribed to book collector Philip Murray (estimate €200 - €300). It's a single sheet of cream card, folded once and printed in brown ink, with the title and illustration by daughter Catherine Heaney on the front cover and the poem inside. This is first appearance of the poem's which was later published in Parnassus in 1990, and collected in Seeing Things (Faber, 1991). 

Heaney's Christmas card list included family, old friends, writers, and colleagues, updated with new names every year, and with individual personal messages inside. Each year featured a poem, sometimes with seasonal associations, and for three years a drawing by his daughter Catherine. She also provided the illustration for Field of Vision in 1990, and I Sing of a Maiden in 2003.