GOGARTY, Oliver St. John, et al. Secret Springs of Dublin Song.

Dublin: The Talbot Press. London: Fisher Unwin, 1918. Super royal octavo. First edition. pp. xi, 51. Printed by letterpress on fine handmade paper. Light brown cloth over bevelled boards, title in gilt on maroon morocco label inset on upper cover. Edition limited to 500 numbered copies (No. 327). Untrimmed. Light wear to extremities. A near fine copy. Scarce.

The contributors to this book of parodies have never been fully elucidated. Gogarty certainly was one; others may include, Susan Mitchell, Lord Dunsany, Seumas O’Sullivan and George Russell (AE). Those parodied include virtually all the Irish poets of the time, notably W.B. Yeats.

Gogarty began his literary life by sharing a tower in Sandymount with James Joyce, and featured thereafter in Ulysses as the model for Buck Mulligan. His own writing never quite lived up to that connection, but his memoirs and the best of his poems remain significant and readable.

Parodies of Yeats include The Wild Dog compares himself to a Swan and Michael Robartes to His Beloved, Telling Her How the Greatness of His Verse shall open to her the door of Heaven. Oliver St John Gogarty contributed some of the several verses parodying George Moore. Susan Langstaff Mitchell (1866-1926) was a friend of Yeats, O’Sullivan, and

especially AE (George Russell), for whom she worked as an assistant for several years. Loosely inserted is a manuscript ‘Key’ in pencil listing the poets and their contribution.