ADAM'S - THE HISTORY SALE - APRIL 26TH 2017 (Click Lot title for more images and to Place Bid)

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Wednesday 26th April
First and only publication of the last ofYeats’ poems in memory of Major Robert
Gregory,‘Reprisals’, in No. 2 of the Ulster poetry periodical Rann (Autumn 1948).
It was published there to mark the return ofYeats’ remains to Sligo, and ‘by the
kindness of Mrs.Yeats’. A very good copy in original wrappers.
Yeats finished his poem in 1920, but withheld it from publication after a request from
Lady Gregory, who thought the timing ‘unpropitious’, soon after the Bloody Sunday
killings; probably the real reason was that she disliked the notion that her beloved
son was ‘cheated’ in death. With its powerful closing lines, it is a direct comment on
the Black-and-Tan terror in rural Ireland.The passage about ‘new-married women’
refers to Ellen Quinn, shot dead while holding her child outside her front door in
Kiltartan, by men in a passing military lorry.
The poem is not in any of Yeats’ collections, and is not in his Collected Poems.
€ 100 - 200
trade unionist and feminist.
George Eliot:The Mill on the Floss, Blackwood n.d., with a fine inscription
on f.f.e.p.,‘To Christabel Susan Manning, at her christening, from Louie
Bennett.
‘MaggieTulliver is the first discontented heroine in fiction. She was a herald
of the woman of the 20th century.
‘A “divine discontent” is at the root of every reform.
‘A “divine discontent” keeps the soul alive.
‘Therefore a “divine discontent” is a desirable possession.’
Louie Bennett [1870-1956] was herself‘a herald of the woman of the 20th
century’. A friend of James Connolly, though a pacifist, she was founder and
first secretary of the IrishWomen’s Suffrage Federation in 1911. She was
general secretary of the IrishWomenWorkers Union for many years, and was
the first woman President of the IrishTrade Union Congress.
Christabel Manning was a daughter of Dr. James Fitzmaurice Manning of
Dublin. She married Robert Alden Childers, third son of Erskine Childers
(executed 1922) and brother of the politician Erskine Childers, fourth Presi-
dent of Ireland (1973-4).
In March 1934 she was awarded a short story prize by Motley magazine. The
judge was Sean O Faolain.
€ 300 - 400