CUALA PRESS: DONAGHY, John Lyle.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

At Dawn Above Aherlow: Poems. First edition, one of 100 copies of Donaghy's first collection, privately printed for the author. His poetry, "demonstrated a predilection for nature themes and echoed the northern landscape of his youth" (DIB). He later featured regularly in the Irish Times, published several collections, and was praised by Samuel Beckett in the 1934 essay "Recent Irish Poetry".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 allowed extra space to take on privately printed editions such as this. 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.

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