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

163 fonsiemealy.ie fm All contents and images are subject to copyright 897 Rare Second Edition Mac Gilla Meidhre (Briano) [Merryman (Brian)] Mediae Noctis Consilium, 12mo D. (Padraig O’Briain) 1898. Second Edn., titles in Irish & English, text in Irish thro-out, 43pp orig. cloth, upr. cover loose. V. Scarce. (1) € 150 - 200 898 30 Copies Only Printed Bullen (A.H.) Weeping Cross, etc., 12mo Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare Head Press) 1917. Sole Edn. Only 30 Copies Printed. Signed Presentation Copy. Uncut, boards, stained. Rare. (1) € 80 - 120 899 Rare Private Press: Trinity Closet Press Dulbin, Five publications as follows, A. Ramillete de Nuestra Sennora, Imprentadel Gabinete del Colegio de la Trinidad. 8vo D. 1974. Folded sheet. B. Mult bel Essample pur Chastiier Amorus, 8vo D. 1975. Folded Sheet. C. Winter, 8vo Dublin 1977, folded sheet. D. Berkeley (Geo. Bishop of Cloyne) Maxims concerning Patriotism, 8vo D. 1978, 7pp + ptd. blue wrappers. Lim. Edn. No. 56 of 250 Copies. E. Kennelly (Brendan) In Spite of the Wise, 8vo D. 1979. Lim. Edn. 50 copies Only. Signed by Author. 5pp. wrappers. Five works, all v. scarce. As a coll., w.a.f. (5) € 100 - 150 900 Roberts (Oliver Michael). The Herald of Dawn. Dublin, For the Author by George Roberts 1919, with a drawing by the author’s mother. Sm qto grey printed wrappers, 6 pp (partly unopened). Laid in are an ALS from Liam Ó Rinn and a TLS from Cecil O’Neill-Watson, thanking the publisher for copies; also an unsigned sheet (on back of an envelope addressed to Miss G. Roberts, Dalkey) with what appears to be a manuscript account of the author, probably by the publisher (his father or uncle?). An interesting item. Rare. (1) € 100 - 150 901 An Unrecorded Yeats Item [Wyndham (Pamela) ed.] A Little Couple and A Baker’s Dozen for Christmas 1928. Higham, Grange Press, Southwick, 20pp, heavy unbleached paper, uncut. Colour printed wrappers with label, stitched in faded green silk. Title page with borrowed Cuala vignette of a tree and stone wall in a bare landscape signed E.C.Y[eats]. Contents list at p. 20. The ‘Little Couple’ is a tipped-in photo of a young girl and boy, aged perhaps 10 and 8, signed by the photographer Adrian Harding opposite the fi rst poem ( Echo by Pamela Wyndham). The ‘Baker’s Dozen’ of poems and extracts include The Stolen Child by W.B. Yeats, Golden Stockings by Oliver St. John Gogarty, and work by Vita Sackville-West, Coventry Patmore, Alfred Noyes, Laurence Binyon and others of the Edwardian beau-monde, mostly on the theme of childhood. Pamela Wyndham was a sister of George Wyndham, Chief Secretary for Ireland 1900-05; they were great-grandchildren of Lord Edward FitzGerald through his daughter Pamela FitzGerald. Pamela Wyndham married fi rst Lord Glenconner (Tennant), and secondly the former Foreign Secretary Lord Grey of Falloden. The children in the frontispiece must be hers. The connection with the Yeats family is through George Wyndham, a patron of the arts, who knewW.B. Yeats, and who in 1904 gave the Abbey Theatre its patent allowing it to stage public performances, at the request of his cousin Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (a former lover of Lady Gregory). See Max Egremont, The Cousins (1977). A very rare item , evidently printed for family and friends. Not in Wade; not in BL, NLI or TCD. COPAC records one copy only, in the British National Trust Library. € 250 - 350 902 ‘The Forlorn Hope of Idealism in Europe’ ‘AE’ [George Russell]. The Future of Ireland and the Awakening of the Fires. Published at 13 Eustace Street. Threepence. Quarto printed wrappers, 12 pp, stapled, n.d. [1897]. With a preparatory poem, and a note at end inviting ‘those interested in the unfolding of the ideas here put forward’, to communicate with AE at 13 Eustace Street, Dublin. Horizontal fold, else a very good copy. (1) A very early work, the fi rst of AE’s political essays, apparently re fl ecting in part on the Parnell controversy. He says we, as a race, are ‘the forlorn hope of idealism in Europe’, but a great destiny awaits us if we can learn from our heroic past and renew our kinship with nature - and if we can reassert our right to freedom of thought. ‘Freedom to speak what hopes and ideals we may have; to act openly for what cause we will; to allow that freedom to others -- that liberty is denied. There are but too many places where to di ff er openly from the priest in politics is to provoke a brawl ..’ A very rare item, not found in COPAC . Denson 3. € 350 - 450