The Road to Wigan Pier.

ORWELL, George [pseudonym of Eric Arthur BLAIR] (1903-1950), [Seamus Heaney association].

London: Victor Gollancz, 1937. [Left Book Club] FIRST EDITION, first impression. A significant copy, formerly the property of Seamus Heaney's English teacher, poet W.J. Harvey (recent provenance book label supplied). Octavo (22 x 15cm), pp.xxiv, 264. Publisher's orange soft covers, with thirty-two photographic plates, primarily of scenes of social deprivation in mining towns. A well-used copy, with toning and spotting to edges, some pencil annotations, faint ink name to inside cover. Moderate general wear to covers, some soiling and marks. Orwell's famous sociological analysis of working class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Northern England prior to the Second World War. From the library of Northern Irish poet Professor William John Harvey (1925–1967). Harvey, a prominent academic, writer, Wordsworth and George Eliot scholar, and Chair of English at Queen's University, Belfast, taught future Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who graduated with a First Class Honours. The personal copy of a man who helped shape one of the world's greatest and beloved poets. In recognition, Heaney published a posthumous collection of Harvey's poems (Carcanet Press, 1973) contributing a foreword in which he acknowledges the support and influence of John Harvey. Item #75738

Price: £350.00