Object of desire: first edition of WB Yeats’s Poems

The paper parchment boards are pictorially gilt and an angel graces the cover

A Yeats poetry collection dating from 1895

Typifying the Arts and Crafts Movement is this first edition of WB Yeats’s Poems, published by Fisher Unwin in 1895. Number 11 of 25 copies on Japanese vellum, the paper parchment boards are pictorially gilt and an angel graces the cover.

On his death in 2001, this was in the collection of James M Gilvarry, a US bibliophile who had one of the finest collections of Irish literature ever assembled. The introduction by ...