YEATS, W. B., & JOHNSON, Lionel. Poetry and Ireland: Essays. FIRST BOOK PRODUCED UNDER CUALA IMPRINT

Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1908. First edition, first impression, one of 250 copies. Octavo. Lady Emer and Tree publisher’s device on title page. Text printed in red and black. Original quarter linen, blue paper boards, front cover lettered in black, blue endpapers, edges untrimmed, partially unopened. Spine and board edges lightly browned, contents clean. Ex lib Dalgan Park with neat circular stamps. A near fine copy.
Miller 12.

This was the first work produced under the Cuala imprint and contains two essays on the topic of poetry and patriotism. Yeats described his contribution, in a copy of the work inscribed to Lady Gregory in 1922, as “the best prose I have written”. The Cuala Press was one half of Cuala Industries, a co-operative business run by Elizabeth and Lily Yeats. Cuala Industries was founded with the aim of reviving the craft of book printing in Ireland and “to give work to Irish girls” (McMurtrie, p. 472). They published many key works and authors of the Irish Literary Revival.

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