CUALA PRESS: DOWDEN, Edward.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Woman's Reliquary. First edition, first impression, one of 300 copies. Edward Dowden (1843-1913) was an Irish literary critic and Shakespeare scholar. This posthumous and anonymous collection of love poetry was edited by his second wife, Elizabeth. Published out of respect for Dowden's friendship with John Butler Yeats, it met with disapproval from his son W. B., with whom Dowden repeatedly clashed on the merits of the Irish Literary Revival.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... 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

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