Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
Property of a Gentleman
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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