New Songs: A Lyric Selection Made by A.E.

[George Russell]

New Songs: A Lyric Selection Made by A.E.

Dublin

O'Donoghue & Co. and A. H. Bullen

1904

Signed by George Russell, with the ownership signature of Padraic Colum.

George Russell (AE), close friend of W. B. Yeats and a guiding force in the Irish Literary Revival, helped countless young writers into print, including Padraic Colum, Seamus O’Sullivan, and later Patrick Kavanagh. In New Songs, he presents poems of eight young poets but excludes the young James Joyce, a slight that Joyce carries into the ninth episode of Ulysses. Nevertheless, also in Ulysses, Joyce remembers the hours “AE” spent trying to help him as a young man, writing: “A.E.I.O.U.” Padraic Colum was a poet, playwright, novelist, friend of James Joyce, and a director of the Abbey Theatre.