YEATS, W.B. The Celtic Twilight. Men and Women, Dhouls and Faeries (First edition)

With frontispiece 'The Last Gleeman' by John B. Yeats facing title. London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1893. First edition, second issue. pp. xii, 212. Olive-green ribbed cloth, title author and publisher in gilt on spine. Lacks one page of works by the author. Minor wear to extremities. Text fresh and clean. A very good copy. Wade 8
The first edition, first issue with the publisher's imprint in capital letters at foot of spine. A work whose title Yeats later found difficult to shake off. 'The Celtic Twilight' can be said to have given its name to the epoch of Ireland's history that saw the beginnings of the Irish Literary Revival, the start of the Irish National Theatre and the Abbey Theatre. Yeats was fortunate to have grown up in Sligo, a county rich in folklore and legends. As a young man he collected these, listening avidly to the tales told him by the local peasantry, people like Paddy Flynn of Ballysodare, by boatmen and cobblers and everyone who had a story. This collection therefore represents the first steps in Yeats' thought on matters concerning the supernatural.
In John Quinn's copy Yeats wrote in 1904: All real stories heard among the people or real incidents with but a little disguise in names and places.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is acknowledged by many as supreme among modern Irish poets. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 (the first Irishman to be so recognized), at which time he was one of Dublin's great established figures, both in his own right and as the representative of the cultural renaissance which had set in motion the Irish revolution and war of independence. Throughout his life, and throughout his poetry - which is still read and loved today - Yeats is recognized as supremely Irish, with his life and poetry reflective of his Irish identity. This work is a compilation of twenty-six poems and essays, many having been previously published in various periodicals. The Celtic Twilight is a miscellany of tales, fables and sketches showing the relationship between humankind and the fairies.
Yeats himself, in his preface entitled This Book, states Next to the desire, which every artist feels, to create for himself a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy universe, I have desired to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who care for things of this kind.

[L4 9D]