Yeats, W.B.

small 4to (209 x 145mm.), FIRST EDITION, one of 400 copies, ADVANCE PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY YEATS TO LADY GREGORY ("Lady Gregory | from her friend | WB Yeats. | Nov 24. 1910...") on the recto of the colophon leaf at the beginning, autograph note beneath about the mistake in the Contents page, contents leaf corrected accordingly by Yeats, with Yeats' autograph version of what became the official errata sheet tipped-in at the end, original grey paper covered boards, linen spine, collector's green cloth chemise and matching slipcase, offsetting to endpapers, minor browning to binding

Lady Augusta Gregory, presentation inscription and bookplate; by descent to Major R.G. Gregory (sale of Lady Gregory's library, Sotheby's, 24 July 1979, lot 418)

Wade 84

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, when appropriate.
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A MAJOR PRE-PUBLICATION PRESENTATION COPY TO THE AUTHOR'S CLOSE FRIEND, COLLABORATOR AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE ABBEY THEATRE. The Green Helmet was published in December 1910, the month after Yeats presented this copy to Lady Gregory.

Yeats met the playwright, folklorist, and literary patron Lady [Isabella] Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) at Edward Martyn's Galway Castle in the summer of 1896, when she was 44 and he was 31. She was the youngest daughter of Sir Robert Gregory of the nearby Coole Park. She immediately invited Yeats top spend time with her at Coole, which would soon become Yeats's second home for the next thirty years. ''Their relationship quickly stabilized into mentor and artist...they rapidly became each other's closest friend and confidant, and remained so...until her death nearly forty years later. Over that period, while she sustained him in many ways, he helped her to emerge as one of the most prominent Irish writers of the day. In identifying her so deliberately by her title rather than by her Christian name, he not only defined their relationship, he helped create the image and name by which she would live, write, and become famous...'' (R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, volume 1., p.171)

Yeats' note below the presentation inscription to Lady Gregory reads: "By a slip of the pen when I was writing out the heading for the first group of poems, I put Raymond Lully's name in the room of the later Alchemist Nicholas Flamel. I read the proofs over & over & never saw it till the work was in print. W. B. Yeats". Yeats clearly presented this copy before the errata slip mentioned by Wade -- inserted loose in most published copies -- was available from the printer.