Signed by David Hammond in black ink to verso of the title page. The second issue in blue wrappers, mistakenly copyrighted ‘Seamus Heaney 1983’. A near fine copy.
Hammond was an original founder of the influential Field Day Theatre Company, alongside Stephen Rea, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane and Brian Friel. Field Day began as a theatre company that toured Ireland for over ten years, premiering all of Friel’s plays, as well as Paulin and Heaney’s first plays. Field Day also had an influential publishing arm under the aegis of Deane. Heaney and Hammond’s friendship pre-dates Field Day and goes back to Belfast in the sixties: ‘I once described David as a nature force masquerading as a human being. Halfway between a lord of misrule and a tuning fork. He grew up in Belfast and belongs to it, but he’s always had an extraordinary insouciance, as if he’d come through the sectarian fires and had the noxious stuff refined out of him’.
Among Schoolchildren was issued by The John Malone Memorial Committee at Queen’s. Hammond was chair of the committee at the time and recalled a dislike for the initial design and further exasperation over copious typographical mistakes. This subsequent edition was issued in dark blue wrappers, with the error corrected.
