George Mackay; Ted HUGHES, Seamus HEANEY; Christopher FRY. Four Poets for St Magnus.

by BROWN

£1,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Celebrating a Kirkwall Kirk BROWN, George Mackay; Ted HUGHES, Seamus HEANEY; Christopher FRY. Four Poets for St Magnus. Orkney: The Breckness Press . 1987. Folio. Original parchment-backed maroon pictorial boards, spine lettered in gilt; beige endpapers; housed in the publisher’s green cloth slipcase with pictorial label to upper panel; pp. [48], five tipped-in facsimile manuscript pages, one page with two lithographic illustrations by Bryce Wilson depicting stone sculptures in St Magnus Cathedral; a fine, as-new copy; signed by George Mackay Brown, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Christopher Fry to the colophon. A beautifully produced celebration of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, no. 49 of 100 copies signed by all four contributors. Published on St Rognvald’s Day, 20 August 1987, by Elizabeth Graham Scarth at The Breckness Press, Orkney, Four Poets for St Magnus was issued to mark the 850th anniversary of the founding of St Magnus Cathedral, the oldest church in Scotland and the northernmost cathedral in the United Kingdom. 100 copies were printed, of which 85, numbered 1–85, were for sale, numbers 1–5 were individually bound, and 15 copies, lettered A–O, hors commerce . The volume was designed by Ron Costley and printed for The Breckness Press by the September Press, Wellingborough, Northants, and Smith Settle, Otley, West Yorkshire. ‘The great stone ship [the Cathedral] is still there’, George Mackay Brown – the only native Orcadian among the contributors – writes

• Binding: Hardcover

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