Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney's translation of "Aeneid: Book VI" has been announced for publication next year. His daughter Catherine announced the posthumous publication, which will be taken care of by publishing company Faber (in the US).

"This translation is the result of work and revisions carried out by him over many years - from the 1980s to the month before his death -- and the decision to publish it was one our family took after long and careful consideration," Heaney's daughter Catherine Said as quoted by BBC.

"However, given its theme of Aeneas's search for his father in the afterlife, it would be hard to think of a more poignant way for us to mark the end of our father's own poetic journey," she went on to say, adding that Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid was a "touchstone" for her father.

The Guardian says that the Irish poet started on translating the book in 1986, after his father passed away. He continued on until he died in August 2013. In a 2008 interview picked up by BBC, Heaney called the book, which follows Aeneas as he journeys into the underworld, "a constant presence."

Faber has the honor of publishing the translation next year and the company's poetry editor Matthew Hollis did not think that such posthumous publication as massive as this could actually even happen, which is why they are working to make it all perfect.

"It is with deep respect and care that we proceed with publication of Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid: respect, because a posthumous publication requires it; care, because, at his death, the author was still in a period of reflection," he said as quoted by The Bookseller.

"It seems almost miraculous that it is possible to publish a substantial new work by Seamus Heaney now, as if, even after his passing, he were capable of offering his readers a gift. That the gift should be Book VI of the Aeneid only adds to the potence of this remarkable translation."

Throughout Heaney's writing career, he was able to weave works that became classics and favorites. These include "District and Circle to Human Chain" and translations of "The Testament of Cresseid" and "Beowulf," which was his bestselling book as per Nielsen BookScan via The Bookseller and sold 100,000 copies when published as paperback in the year 2000. In 1995, Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The translation will be published March 2016 in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux while Bonnefant Press was tapped to produce a limited edition of it complete with images by the artist Jan Hendrix.