CUALA PRESS: DUNSANY, Edward Plunkett, Lord.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Selections from the Writings. First edition, first impression, one of 250 copies. This attractively produced collection, printed by the Yeats sisters, was an active co-option of Dunsany into the Irish literary movement in spite of his unionist political stance. W. B. Yeats's introduction "remains one of the acutest early analyses" of Dunsany's work (Joshi & Schweitzer, p. 6).The Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany, "unquestionably one of the most important writers of heroic fantasy of the century" (Bleiler), was a friend of W. B. Yeats through their mutual involvement in the Abbey Theatre. Dunsany's first contribution to the Irish theatre movement, The Glittering Gate, was performed there in 1909. Selections from the Writings includes the first act of King Argimēnēs and the Unknown Warrior - "one of the most successful plays every produced at the Abbey"- and The Gods of the Mountain - "perhaps Dunsany's best tragedy in which a group of beggars impersonate the gods who turn them to stone for their insolence" (Joshi & Schweitzer, p. 3 & ODNB).The Cuala Press was one half of Cuala Industries, a co-operative business run by Yeats's sisters Lily and Elizabeth. 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-Sa

• Printing: first

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