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Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939) The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957.
First edition, limited issue, octavo; copy number 288 of 825 signed by Yeats on tipped in limitation page; bound in gilt-lettered red and white buckram, top edge stained black; including the original publisher's cream-colored cloth slipcase (spine a touch sunned; slipcase somewhat soiled and bumped); 9 1/4 x 6 in.
Before his death in 1939, Yeats signed 825 blank leaves which were kept by his publisher at Macmillan until this posthumous publication. The leaves were tipped into the first 825 copies and offered for $30.00 each. According to a printed letter from Kroch's & Brentano's accompanying this lot, the present copy was one of 250 that were later offered after a forgotten stash was discovered by employees at a Macmillan warehouse.
In this comprehensive Variorum edition of Yeats's poetry, "Readers will now have the opportunity to note the changes rung by time throughout his long period of creativity - the increase of daring with which he searched his thoughts and emotions, and the growing technical mastery with which he revealed them. In poems crowded with symbol and image, sensuous music, and the play of intellect, he shows himself to be a poet and philosopher who, like Shakespeare, was not of an age but for all time." (Kroch & Brentano letter).
