STEPHENS, James. The Crock of Gold. With twelve illustrations in colour and decorative headings and tailpieces by Thomas Mackenzie [BOUND BY BAYNTUN RIVIERE]

London: Macmillan and Co., 1926. Medium octavo. pp. vii, [1], 228. Bound in full red polished calf by Bayntun Riviere of Bath. Covers framed by triple gilt fillets, enclosing in the centre in gilt a Leprecaun standing beside a Crock of Gold. Spine divided into six panels by five gilt raised bands, title and author in gilt on contrasting morocco labels in the second and third, the remainder tooled in gilt to a centre-and-corner design with a vase tool at centre; fore-edges and doublures gilt; comb-marbled endpapers; red and gold endbands. All edges gilt. Minor rubbing and mild foxing to verso of rear endpaper. A near fine copy.
James Stephens (1880-1950), was a poet, novelist, and storyteller. His father died when he was two, and on his mother’s remarriage he was sent to an orphanage. He ran away and found employment as a solicitor’s clerk in Dublin. From 1907 he contributed poems, stories and essays to Arthur Griffith’s nationalist newspaper ‘Sinn Féin’. He also contributed to James Larkin’s ‘The Irish Worker’. This novel mixes realism, fairy tale, and fantasy. ‘The Crock of Gold’ concerns the separate quests undertaken by the Philosopher, the Thin Woman of lnis Magrath (his wife), and Caitilin Ní Murrachu (a peasant girl), during which they meet with the gods Pan and Angus Óg

[L3 6A]