Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers Rare Books & Collectors' Sale December 9th & 10th, 2020

161 fonsiemealy.ie fm All contents and images are subject to copyright 886 Landmark of the Irish Literary Renaissance - The Complete Set Periodical: The Shanachie, An Irish miscellany illustrated. Nos. 1 - 6 [all published], 4to, 6 issues, Dublin, (Maunsel) [1906] - 1907, orig. pict. wrappers. (6) € 800 - 1000 887 ‘We are Rather Pressed for Money’ Yeats (George) and the Cuala Press. An interesting correspondence with Michael Freyer of the Brown Jacket Bookshop in Dublin, mainly concerning arrangements to sell Cuala titles at Freyer’s bookshop [then located in Cuala’s former premises in Baggot St.] Eight letters in all: fi ve from Mrs. Yeats (three TLS, two ALS, all on headed Cuala notepaper), and three carbon copies of typescript replies by Freyer. Mrs. Yeats’ letters are generally short and to the point, Freyer’s rather longer. They include orders for titles, arrangements to have Cuala titles on display on ‘sale-or-return’, a query from Mrs. Yeats about a letter by Freyer’s brother Grattan concerning the text of a poem by W.B. Yeats, etc. Mrs. Yeats’ last letter (June 4 1947) asks for a cheque on account, ‘We are rather pressed for money’. With a copy of Cuala hand-coloured print no. 285, ‘The Custom House’ by Hilda Roberts. George Yeats took over management of Cuala’s business in the 1940s, after Elizabeth Yeats’ death in 1940 and her sister Lily’s increasing illness. As a collection. (1) € 400 - 600 889 Yeats (W.B.). A Return Card on which Yeats has written that he cannot be present at a meeting of the Dramatists’ Club (in London), and apologising for not explaining his absence from other meetings as he was out of town. With a good (though hurried) signature. (1) € 200 - 300 890 The Old Lady Says No? Yeats (W.B.). A copy of Rann , an Ulster Quarterly of Poetry, Autumn 1948, containing fi rst publication of Yeats’ poem ‘Reprisals’, written on the death of Lady Gregory’s son Robert, 1918, but withheld at that time at her request, probably because she did not like the passage about ‘half-drunk or whole-mad soldiery / are murdering your tenants there .. / Then close your ears with dust and lie / Among the other cheated dead.’ A fi ne copy. Scarce. (1) € 100 - 200 888 Cuala Press: Brindley (Louis H.) Christmas Eve 1940, 12mo, D. (Cuala) 1940, 8pps., (no wrappers); Christmas 1944, 12mo D. (Cuala) 1944, 4pps., (printed only one side). (2) * These Christmas verse-letters were printed in small numbers for distribution to the author’s friends. € 180 - 250