/ Source: Reuters
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Seamus Heaney, one of the world's best-known poets and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, has died aged 74, his family said on Friday.
Northern Ireland-born Heaney, whose 12 volumes of poetry include his 1966 debut "Death of a Naturalist", "The Spirit Level", and last year's "District and Circle", had suffered recently from ill health.
"The death has taken place of Seamus Heaney," said a statement on behalf of the Heaney family released on Friday by his publicists at publishers Faber and Faber.
"The poet and Nobel Laureate died in hospital in Dublin this morning after a short illness."
(Reporting by Sam Cage, additional reporting by Paul Casciato in London; Editing by Stephen Addison)