Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern

Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern

Property of a Gentleman

W.B. Yeats | Selected Poems, London, 1929, first edition, inscribed by the author to his mother-in-law

Lot Closed

July 18, 04:44 PM GMT

Estimate

7,000 - 9,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

W.B. Yeats


Selected Poems. London: Macmillan, 1929


FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 1,500 COPIES, INSCRIBED BY YEATS TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW, 8vo, autograph correction on p.186, original boards, dust-jacket, extremities bumped, else a near-fine copy


Inscribed by the author to his mother-in-law: "Mrs Tucker from W.B. Yeats Nov. 15 1929". (The publication date was Oct 8, 1929.) Edith Ellen "Nelly" Tucker, formerly Hyde-Lees, was a close friend of Olivia Shakespear (Yeats's muse and sometime lover). Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees, Nelly's daughter by her second husband Henry Tucker, Olivia's brother. Olivia's daughter, Dorothy—Georgie's best friend—married Ezra Pound. Pound and Mrs. Tucker were the only witnesses at Yeats's marriage. Yeats was 52 at the time and Georgie 24, but, as Yeats scholar Roy Foster notes: "Long afterwards WBY told a later lover that Georgie had been more or less ‘reared' to be his wife by Nelly Tucker and Olivia Shakespear, who directed her interests towards mysticism in preparation" and that she was "wise beyond her years". Handwritten correction by Yeats to the text of "Sailing to Byzantium" on p.186 (emending "ladies and lords of Byzantium" to "lords and ladies of Byzantium"); the same correction as on the erratum slip (which is present). A very nearly fine copy in dust-jacket and scarce in this condition.

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