GOGARTY, Oliver. Wild Apples. [LIMITED TO 50 COPIES ONLY SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR TO HARRY CLARKE]

Dublin: Cuala Press, 1928. First edition. pp. 33. Quarter cream cloth on grey paper boards, printed paper title along spine, with minute loss. Presentation copy, inscribed “To my friend, the Artist, Harry Clarke” and dated (22.v.’28) by the author on front free endpaper. With letter loosely inserted to Harry Clarke from Thomas Bodkin. Fine copy in holland-backed boards in an edition limited to 50 copies only.

Miller 45.
A collection of poetry in an edition limited to fifty copies only, printed at the Cuala Press specially for the author. W.B. Yeats requested a revised and extended version for the second edition of the book, with a preface by him. Gogarty was Clarke’s physician and they developed a close friendship. He was scathing of the Irish government for its failure to acquire the ‘Geneva Window’. “I thought of the £4,000,000 spent on Gaelic culture which consisted in bemusing children with Esperantisised Irish and making them fall more readily victims to the Communist and Demagogue. And I thought of the fate of Harry Clarke, that supreme colourist in glass, who lived in Frederick Street, to see the window he did for the Irish Hall at Geneva (of course it had to be Geneva, for the eyes of a fool of a Nation are on the ends of the earth) turned down by the Government who commissioned it, because a figure of two celebrating Irish exiled authors were in the nude. The money spent is attempting to turn this nation into a race of bilingualists ignorant and gullible in two languages”.
On titlepage the Dun Emer pressmark. ‘Lady Emer and tree’. Wood engraving by Elinor Monsell. First used in Twenty One Poems by Katharine Tynan, 1907. Dr. Thomas Bodkin was Professor of Fine Arts and Director of the Barber Institute in the University of Birmingham.
This first edition includes several items which were not included (probably for legal reasons) in the later reprint.