YEATS, Jack B.

£900 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

James Flaunty or The Terror of the Western Seas. First edition of the first of the artist's children's books published by Elkin Mathews. The book was the first in the series "Jack B. Yeats's Plays In the Old Manner", inspired by R. L. Stevenson's account of a toy theatre and playscripts in a stationer's shop. The present copy is one of the copies with colour added to the front wrapper by the artist."Among Mathews' most notable books for children were those written and illustrated by Jack B. Yeats: his plays for the miniature stage, James Flaunty... (1901), The Treasure of the Garden (1902), and The Scourge of the Gulph (1903), and his stories, The Bosun and the Bob-Tailed Comet (1904) and A Little Fleet (1909)" (Nelson, p. 21). Thanking the publishers for a cheque in 1921, Yeats recalled that "Flaunty was the favourite. Perhaps just because it was the first" (Nelson, p. 284).John Butler Yeats "always talked of Jack as the poet of the family". He described James Flaunty to Lady Gregory as a "most poetical" play; and noted that "it assures for ever Jack's fame - and people will study that play as presenting the right model for all plays big and little" (Pyle, p. 64).

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