YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER | The Tower. London: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1928

The Property of a Gentleman

YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER

The Tower. London: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1928

8vo (5 x 7 1/2 in.; 125 x 129 mm). Half-title. Original olive green cloth, cover and spine pictorially stamped in gilt and designed by T. Sturge Moore, edges uncut, original green-blue jacket pictorially printed in black duplicating cover design. In custom cream and blue linen clamshell case. 

First edition in original jacket, one of 2,000 copies — a fine copy

The Tower was Yeats's first major volume of poetry to appear as Nobel Laureate (he had been awarded the Nobel Prize five years earlier in 1923). It is considered one of the poet's most important volumes, an firmly established his legacy as a Modernist. 

The title of the collection is a reference to Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917. Yeats commissioned T. Sturge Moore to design the cover and jacket, which depicts the tower (or Thoor Ballyllee, as Yeats Gaelicized the name to), and its reflection in the water.

The collection includes some of Yeats's most enduring verse, to include "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," and "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen."

REFERENCES

Wade 158