A Vision; An Explanation of Life Founded Upon the Writings of Giraldus and Upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta ben Luka

London: T. Werner Laurie, Ltd, 1925. First and Limited Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. Dulac, Edmund. First printing, one of 600 copies, large octavo size, 282 pp., signed by W.B. Yeats, with three illustrations by Edmund Dulac, with publisher's dust jacket and prospectus. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is acknowledged by many as "supreme among modern Irish poets". He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 (the first Irish to be so recognized), at which time he was "one of Dublin's great established figures, both in his own right and as the representative of the cultural renaissance which...had set in motion the Irish revolution (truncated) and war of independence." Throughout his life, and throughout his poetry - which is still read and loved today - Yeats is recognized as supremely Irish, with his life and poetry reflective of his Irish identity.

This work, "A Vision", was written during a period in his life of experimenting with "automatic writing"; it has at times been compared with Poe's "Eureka: A Prose Poem". This the true first edition, privately published; a second edition was published in 1937 with some alterations. Viewed as a meditation on the intertwining of history, imagination, and the occult, Yeats incorporates some of the work of Giraldus (Geraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales, ca. 1146 - ca. 1223) and Kusta ben Luka (Qusta ibn Luqa, 820-912); some of this fictitious, some based upon fact. The work makes sense when one understands that Yeats himself was deeply interested in spirituality, in varied forms, for most of his adult life.

___DESCRIPTION: Quarter ivory parchment with pale blue textured paper over boards, white paper spine label with brown lettering, top edge rough-cut, fore- and bottom edges uncut, textured endpapers (matching the binding), frontispiece (a portrait of Giraldus), full-page illustration of "The Great Wheel", and a small mounted illustration of a unicorn all drawn to woodcuts by Edmund Dulac, limitation statement tipped in following the title page leaf, this stamped no. 508 of an edition of 600 copies, with the signature of Yeats in black ink below; large octavo size (9" by 6 1/8"), pagination: [i-vi] [2 pp., limitation with blank verso] [vii-viii] ix-xxiv, [1-2] 3-256; note this is the first printing of this work, although certain of the included poems were previously published in other works. In the original dust jacket of matching blue textured paper, with matching paper spine label. Loosely laid in is the prospectus, a single sheet folded once to four pages (8" by 5 1/4"), printed in black and green, the edition size, which had been printed as "1,000", crossed off and the number "600" written above, the back page being the order form.

___CONDITION: Volume near fine; the paper boards clean, the parchment clean (albeit with a few faint spots of foxing), the top corners straight, the bottom corners gently bumped but all without rubbing, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; light bumping to the head and tail of the spine, light offsetting to the free endpapers from the dust jacket, a few very light marks to the free endpapers (from a prior owner covering the jacket and using cello to hold it in place), and some foxing to the top edge of the text block. The paper dust jacket very good; clean overall but with sunning to the spine and minor overall edgewear, sunning and some wear to the spine label (no loss of text), and a few marks to the flaps. The prospectus is fine overall, clean and without noticeable wear, one very light, stray mark to the bottom margin of the first page.

___CITATIONS: Wade no. 149; Hughey no. 66; online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; and the web site of YeatsVision.

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