YEATS, W. B.
Easter, 1916
4to, original bright green printed paper wrappers. (No place: Privately Printed by Clement Shorter, 1917). First edition. One of only 25 copies printed: “Of this poem twenty-five copies only have been privately printed by Clement Shorter for distribution among his friends.” Wade 117. On the colophon, this copy is numbered 10 and signed by the publisher.
The Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic occurred on Monday, April 24, and lasted until April 30, 1916. On May 11, Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory: “The Dublin tragedy has been a great sorrow and anxiety. . . . I have little doubt there have been many miscarriages of justice. . . I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me – and I am very despondent about the future. At the moment I feel that all the work of years has been overturned, all the bringing together of classes, all the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics.” Yeats was staying at Maud Gonne’s home in Colleville, France at the time of the Rebellion, and wrote most of “Easter, 1916” there. In one of those miscarriages of justice to which Yeats referred in his letter to Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne’s husband, Major John MacBride, was executed on May 5th for his presumed role in the Rebellion. Yeats returned to Dublin in September, and completed the poem on September 25th at Lady Gregory’s home at Coole Park. “Copies were sent to selected friends in the autumn (Gonne, Gregory, Ernest Boyd), and on 7 December he read it to a small group at Lindsey House, where Gregory was staying; Gregory found it ‘extraordinarily impressive’ . . . At some point that winter WBY drew up a contents page for his next Cuala volume, placing ‘1916’ first, but he abandoned the idea, deciding instead on a private printing with Clement Shorter, to whom he sent a copy the following March. The delay, as he told Shorter, was at Gregory’s request. She ‘asked me not to send it you until we had finished our dispute with the authorities about the Lane pictures.” – R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life. II. The Arch Poet. (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 59-66.
After permitting Shorter’s severely limited edition of “Easter, 1916”, Yeats withheld the poem from publication for three years owing to fears of political reprisal. Finally, at the height of the Irish War for Independence, he was prepared to make a public statement and decided to publish the revised “Easter, 1916” in the New Statesman, which had assumed a leading role in supporting the Irish nationalist cause, particularly by its defense of the Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney. “Easter, 1916” appeared in the New Statesman on 23 October 1920, two days before MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison following 74 days on a hunger strike.
“In its intellectual complexity, subtly modulated argument, and tightly controlled changes of mood and form, ‘Easter 1916’ reached a new level of achievement among WBY’s political poems . . . Transcending politics, it is also a last, elegiac love-lyric to Gonne.” – Foster, p. 59. The poem was eventually published in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala Press, 1920), its first book appearance. The same volume included the other political poems, “Sixteen Dead Men”, “The Rose Tree” and “On A Political Prisoner” that Yeats had written since first composing “Easter, 1916”. Wade p. 380.
Clement Shorter, a former civil servant turned journalist, was the editor of the Illustrated London News, and the husband of the Irish poet Dora Sigerson. Sigerson was also the daughter of Professor George Sigerson of University College Dublin, an authority on Gaelic poetry. In 1918, Shorter published Nine Poems by Yeats.
After Mosada, Yeats’ extremely rare first book, this pamphlet, Easter, 1916, which marked the first publication of one of Yeats’ greatest poems, is the rarest of all of the poet’s publications.
A fine bright copy.
$45,000.00
The Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic occurred on Monday, April 24, and lasted until April 30, 1916. On May 11, Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory: “The Dublin tragedy has been a great sorrow and anxiety. . . . I have little doubt there have been many miscarriages of justice. . . I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me – and I am very despondent about the future. At the moment I feel that all the work of years has been overturned, all the bringing together of classes, all the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics.” Yeats was staying at Maud Gonne’s home in Colleville, France at the time of the Rebellion, and wrote most of “Easter, 1916” there. In one of those miscarriages of justice to which Yeats referred in his letter to Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne’s husband, Major John MacBride, was executed on May 5th for his presumed role in the Rebellion. Yeats returned to Dublin in September, and completed the poem on September 25th at Lady Gregory’s home at Coole Park. “Copies were sent to selected friends in the autumn (Gonne, Gregory, Ernest Boyd), and on 7 December he read it to a small group at Lindsey House, where Gregory was staying; Gregory found it ‘extraordinarily impressive’ . . . At some point that winter WBY drew up a contents page for his next Cuala volume, placing ‘1916’ first, but he abandoned the idea, deciding instead on a private printing with Clement Shorter, to whom he sent a copy the following March. The delay, as he told Shorter, was at Gregory’s request. She ‘asked me not to send it you until we had finished our dispute with the authorities about the Lane pictures.” – R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life. II. The Arch Poet. (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 59-66.
After permitting Shorter’s severely limited edition of “Easter, 1916”, Yeats withheld the poem from publication for three years owing to fears of political reprisal. Finally, at the height of the Irish War for Independence, he was prepared to make a public statement and decided to publish the revised “Easter, 1916” in the New Statesman, which had assumed a leading role in supporting the Irish nationalist cause, particularly by its defense of the Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney. “Easter, 1916” appeared in the New Statesman on 23 October 1920, two days before MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison following 74 days on a hunger strike.
“In its intellectual complexity, subtly modulated argument, and tightly controlled changes of mood and form, ‘Easter 1916’ reached a new level of achievement among WBY’s political poems . . . Transcending politics, it is also a last, elegiac love-lyric to Gonne.” – Foster, p. 59. The poem was eventually published in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala Press, 1920), its first book appearance. The same volume included the other political poems, “Sixteen Dead Men”, “The Rose Tree” and “On A Political Prisoner” that Yeats had written since first composing “Easter, 1916”. Wade p. 380.
Clement Shorter, a former civil servant turned journalist, was the editor of the Illustrated London News, and the husband of the Irish poet Dora Sigerson. Sigerson was also the daughter of Professor George Sigerson of University College Dublin, an authority on Gaelic poetry. In 1918, Shorter published Nine Poems by Yeats.
After Mosada, Yeats’ extremely rare first book, this pamphlet, Easter, 1916, which marked the first publication of one of Yeats’ greatest poems, is the rarest of all of the poet’s publications.
A fine bright copy.
$45,000.00
