Adam's Works on Paper ONILNE Auction Ending August 10th 2020

92 Bidding ends 10am Monday 10 th August 255 YEATS, W.B A Copy of Yeats’ The Tower, March 1928 (reprint) Evidently the book referred to, inscribed on f.e.p. ‘To Maud Gonne / from W.B. Yeats / Jun 13 1928’, and with a correction in Yeats’ hand to Section IV of ‘Among School Children’, p. 55, amending ‘a mass of shadows’ to read ‘a mess of shadows’. The letter (Lot ?) accounts for Gonne’s copy being a reprint: evidently an earlier copy went astray. ‘Among School Children’ is among the finest of Yeats’ later works. Lines such as ‘A sixty year old smiling public man’ (Yeats himself) have entered common memory. There is no direct reference to Maud Gonne, though her memory can be inferred in the lines, ‘I look upon one child or t’other there / And wonder if she stood so at that age .. / And thereupon my heart is driven wild: / She stands before me as a living child .. O body swayed to music, O brightening glance / How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ The copy of The Tower here is in need of extensive restoration. The wrapper is in several parts, lacking most of spine, the cover is stained and worn, the gutta percha is partly perished and the prelims are dampstained at inner margins. It is, however, substantially complete, and the text is generally clean. Books inscribed by Yeats to Gonne are very rare, possibly because of repeated Special Branch raids on Gonne’s home during the Civil War. Most of the Yeats-Gonne correspondence is now in an American academic collection. Also with this lot, three fragments (one blank, others in Maud Gonne’s hand), apparently parts of a letter from Gonne to W.B. Yeats. Provenance: Roebuck House, Dublin home of Maud Gonne. As a collection, w.a.f. € 2,000 - 3,000