CUALA PRESS: YEATS, W. B.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Responsibilities: Poems and a Play. First edition, with an inscribed note by Yeats tipped in and incorporating a line from the introductory poem: "Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun. W. B. Yeats". This copy is number 362 of 400 copies numbered by Elizabeth Yeats. "In these poems Yeats breaks away from his early manner and begins to purge his imagery of abstraction" (Connolly).The Cuala Press was one half of Cuala Industries, a co-operative business run by Elizabeth and Lily Yeats. Cuala Industries was founded with the aim of reviving the craft of book printing in Ireland and "to give work to Irish girls" (McMurtrie, p. 472). The press's "clearly legible, slender volumes with their distinctive paper labels may be seen as the sole survivors of the handcrafted ideal established in 1900 by Walker and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Press" (ODNB).This copy does not include the errata slip as is typical of subscriber copies (Wade, p. 114).

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