Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers RARE BOOK & COLLECTORS SALE 6th & 7th, December 2022

123 Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 669. Kavanagh (Patrick) Recent Poems. 1958, self- published, quarto limp green cloth, untitled, ‘hand set in 12 pt Egmont Light & printed on a hand press in an edition of 25 copies of which this is no. 10’, Signed (at rear) Patrick Kavanagh, also Signed on t.p. dated Dec. 1958, and inscribed in Kavanagh’s hand, ‘For Elinor®gie / April 1959.’ With errata sheet, manuscript corrections in Kavanagh’s hand on p. 5, 11, 12, 14 and 20 (only the first and second listed on the errata sheet). Some browning on pp. 24-5 (from a press cutting of the same poem laid in), else a fine copy. Kavanagh’s last, rarest and most desirable collection, including his fine elegy ‘In Memory of My Mother’, and his apologia, ‘If ever you come to Dublin town’: ‘He knew that posterity has no use For anything but the soul, The lines that speak the passionate heart, The spirit that lives alone, O he was a lone one, Fol dol the di do, Yet he lived happily I tell you.’ €1800 - €2500 670. For Elinor, One of only 20 sets signed by Kavanagh Kavanagh (Patrick) Kavanagh’s Weekly. Vol. 1 no. 1 (Saturday April 12, 1952) to No. 13 (July 5, 1952), the complete set including the rare final issue, bound together in quarto blue cloth (lacking spine cloth but holding firmly). Printed for the publisher, Peter Kavanagh, 62 Pembroke Road, Dublin. Pages browned as usual, fragile at edges, a few small marginal tears, but an excellent set. On back page of final issue, it states ‘This edition is limited to 500 copies [amended in m/ss to ‘100’] of which 200 [amended to ‘20’] autographed copies are available’, stamped No. 32 and Signed ‘Patrick Kavanagh / 9 July 1952 / For Elinor’ [O’Brien]. In the second-last issue it was stated ‘The next issue of this paper will be the final one .. If, however, we receive in the meantime a sum of £1,000 or upwards we will .. continue to publish ..’ No such sum was received, and the final issue is headed ‘The story of an Editor who was Corrupted by Love’. Odd numbers turn up from time to time, usually in poorish condition, but the complete set with the final issue (sold only as part of a complete set) is now extremely rare. Elinor O’Brien Wiltshire was a descendant of the Cahirmoyle family of William Smith O’Brien. She is described in Quinn’s Kavanagh biography as one of the most faithful and dedicated of Kavanagh’s female friends in later years (though she was never romantically involved with him), see p. 313. She was for a time a neighbour in Pembroke Road. €1500 - €2000