The shelf · Letters of J.B. Yeats
First edition
Letters of J.B. Yeats
Free tracked shipping in the US. Ships within two to three business days, wrapped in bubble wrap and protected — never a bare mailer. From a smoke-free home. Returns accepted within 7 days of delivery for any reason; the buyer pays return shipping, and the book must come back in the condition it was sent. If a copy is not as we described it, we pay the return and refund in full. The policy, in full.
- Book
- Near Fine
- Jacket
- Near Fine
- Signed
- Signed twice by John McGahern. Flat-signed in black ink on the title page beneath his printed name, and additionally inscribed by him on the front free endpaper. The inscription reads:
- Our ref
- RCB-4a96f47d58b6
What a true first shows: The letters were first published 1944; THIS abridged selection with McGahern's introduction was first published 1999. As a distinct edition, 1999 is the first appearance of this selection, but no number line is visible to confirm the printing.
For Michael O'Shea
with affection
John McGahern
Foxfield, March 2000
"Now, a most powerful and complex part of the personality is affection and affection springs straight out of the memory."
The quotation is drawn from one of John Butler Yeats's letters in this volume.
Foxfield was McGahern's farm in County Leitrim, where he lived from the 1970s until his death in 2006; the inscription is dated from his home some four months after publication. Joseph Hone — the Yeats family friend and biographer — made the comprehensive 1944 selection of these letters; McGahern abridged it for this edition and contributed the introductory essay. It is his only sustained published engagement with the Yeats family, and the volume in which his own lifelong preoccupation with memory meets John Butler Yeats's. That he chose a line on affection and memory to accompany an inscription written "with affection" is characteristic of him.
Signed McGahern material is uncommon in the trade, and inscribed presentation copies dated from Foxfield are notably scarce. A double-signed association copy.
First printing of this abridgement — full number line present including the 1 (2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1). Octavo. Publisher's boards in the original pictorial dust jacket reproducing a portrait of John Butler Yeats, unclipped with the £25.00 price intact. Eight reproductions of drawings.
The inscription leaf is clean and unmarked, with the ink strong and unfaded, no offsetting to the facing page and no bleed-through to the verso. Binding tight and square; text block clean and unmarked throughout. Jacket bright and unclipped, with only trivial handling wear.
Note on the photographs: the light surface reflection and minor creasing visible in the images is on the archival mylar sleeve, not on the jacket itself. The jacket is the issued Faber wrapper, with the correct printed £25.00 price on the front flap.
The dust jacket is protected in a new archival mylar cover, which is included.
Shipped carefully packed and tracked. Message me with any question about this copy — happy to send additional photographs.
Photographs show the exact copy you will receive. Every flaw we found is listed above; if we missed one, the return is on us.