YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER | Poems Written In Discouragement 1912-1913. Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1913

The Property of a Gentleman

YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER

Poems Written In Discouragement 1912-1913. Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1913

4to (5 1/4 x 6 3/8 in.; 135 x 162 mm). 8 pp. stitched. Gray wrappers, upper wrapper printed in black, remnants of red silk thread; minor toning, short clean split to head of fold. In custom quarter black morocco over marbled board clamshell case and folding chemise, spine gilt lettered. 

First edition, one of only 50 copies printed, which were not offered for sale

Yeats wrote these five poems in response to the Hugh Lane gallery controversy, and the verses present in this pamphlet illustrate a key shift in Yeats’s work, one in which he is driven in on himself. Published by Yeats's sister at her Cuala Press in October 1913, the collection gathered together poems inspired by Sir Hugh Lane's proposal to establish a modern art gallery in Dublin, and the rejection of the plan by Dublin Corporation. The last of the poems, "To a Shade," had been finished on 4 October, but was re-dated to 29 September, likely to allow it to serve as a companion piece to "September 1913" (which, incidentally, had been re-titled from "Romance in Ireland." The date of 29 September serves as a full stop of sorts—a point of punctuation that makes this irrefutably a document of contemporary commentary. 

A small and scarce collection of verse marking an important turning point in Yeats's body of work

REFERENCES

Wade 107

PROVENANCE

James O. Edwards (booklabel to interior of upper wrapper)