CUALA PRESS: YEATS, W. B.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Estrangement: Being Some Fifty Thoughts from a Diary First edition, first impression, one of 300 copies of this collection of Yeats's thoughts on subjects ranging from Irish politics to Eastern philosophy.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). In 1925 it moved to a premises in Dublin which, for the first time, allowed a showroom to display the business's books, prints, cards, and embroideries. 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 is from the library of Louis Claude Purser (1854-1932), brother of the artist Sarah Purser. A fellow classics student with Oscar Wilde at school, Purser was appointed professor of Latin at Trinity College, Dublin, and later served as president of the Royal Irish Academy. Elizabeth Yeats was his closest female friend.

• Printing: first

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.