STEPHENS, James. The Crock of Gold. With twelve illustrations in colour and decorative headings and tailpieces by Thomas Mackenzie

London: Macmillan and Co., 1930. Crown octavo. pp. [viii], 228. Bound in full green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt. Spine divided into six panels by five gilt raised bands, title and author in gilt on maroon morocco letterpieces in the second and fourth, the remainder tooled in gilt to a centre-and-corner design; fore-edges and turn-ins gilt; comb-marbled endpapers; red and silver double endbands. All edges gilt. Traces of old inoffensive waterstain. A very good 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. [L4 9D]