The British Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800s, whose most prominent exponent was William Morris, sparked a desire in Ireland for handcrafted works whose manufacturing had become mass-produced during the Industrial Revolution. Elizabeth Yeats (nicknamed “Lolly”) and Susan Yeats (nicknamed “Lily”), W. B. Yeats’s sisters, became part of William Morris’s circle in London. Lolly trained as a printer and Lily as an embroiderer. In 1902, with W. B. Yeats’s financial backing and together with Evelyn Gleeson, they founded a craft and printing studio named “Dun Emer,” after the wife of a legendary Irish hero. The first books of the press were printed in 1903, and by 1908 the Yeats sisters had renamed themselves “Cuala Industries,” with Elizabeth running the Cuala Press. This private press, printing beautiful limited editions on handmade paper as well as broadsides with artwork by brother Jack Yeats, became the preeminent publisher of the works of the Irish Literary Revival. Its authors include not only W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, but also J. M. Synge, George Russell, Katherine Tynan, Douglas Hyde, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Frank O’Connor, and Patrick Kavanagh.
W. B. Yeats.In The Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age.Dundrum: The Dun Emer Press, 1903.
Dun Emer Press’s first book signed and inscribed with a couplet by W. B. Yeats: “The sun was laughing sweetly / The moon plucked at my rein.” Virtually all of Yeats’s work until his death was first published in book form by his sisters’ private press, initially Dun Emer Press but after 1908, the Cuala Press.
AE [George Russell].Nuts of Knowledge: Lyrical Poems Old and New.Dundrum: The Dun Emer Press, 1903.
The second book from the press, this volume has Russell’s manuscript poems on the front and rear endpapers and is signed by Elizabeth Yeats and Evelyn Gleeson, founders of the Dun Emer Press.
Twenty One Poems Written by Lionel Johnson: Selected by William B. Yeats.Dundrum: The Dun Emer Press, 1904.
Inscribed: “‘I am one of those who fell’ W. B. Yeats.”
This posthumous collection of poems was written by Yeats’s contemporary and friend Lionel Johnson, who died of a stroke in 1902, aged thirty-five. He introduced his cousin Olivia Shakespear to Yeats in 1894, and they became friends and intermittent lovers for the next forty years. Her daughter Dorothy married Ezra Pound, and Dorothy’s friend George married Yeats.
W. B. Yeats.Stories of Red Hanrahan.Dundrum: The Dun Emer Press, 1904.
This volume is signed by W. B. Yeats, May 1905, and is inscribed by him below his name with a series of unique occult symbols. The extraordinarily uncommon occult inscription by Yeats is evidence of his deep involvement in the occult circles that were embedded in the intellectual world of both England and Ireland of the time.
This little catalogue, from the year the Yeats sisters established Cuala Industries, sets out the range of embroidery and printing that they were creating. The workshop initially remained in Dundrum after splitting off from Dun Emer Press. In addition to training Irish women in the trades of embroidery and printing, Cuala was intended to be financially independent. This goal was never quite met, and Cuala depended on W. B. Yeats to help subsidize its existence.
As the Cuala Press began its fifth year, Elizabeth Yeats set out her mission statement, writing “I desire to revive the art of fine printing, which has not been practiced in Ireland since the eighteenth century.” The catalogue lists fourteen books as “Out of Print,” including books under the Dun Emer imprint; three books listed as “A Few Copies Still Remain”; and one book by her brother W. B. Yeats, “New Poems,” listed as “In Preparation.” It also lists a monthly “Broadside” featuring ballads by singers “living and dead” and drawings by Jack Yeats, for which subscriptions are being received.
Complete sets of seven series designed by Jack Yeats, 1908 to 1915.
These broadsides, a selection of which are shown here, were published monthly in an edition of three hundred and appeared in seven annual series, beginning in June 1908 and concluding in May 1915. Each broadside contains several drawings by Jack Yeats, some in color and some in black and white, along with a ballad or poem, often unattributed and implied to be traditional. The eclectic ballad topics range from local Irish loves and losses and the oppression of the British to the life of the American outlaw Jesse James as well as the exile of Napoleon.
W. B. Yeats.Responsibilities: Poems and a Play.Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1914.
Lily Yeats’s copy with her bookplate and signature, one of four hundred copies.
This collection marked a stylistic shift by Yeats as he approached the age of fifty. Following the first of three winters spent at Stone Cottage in England with his secretary, Ezra Pound, Yeats adopted the more spare style of his later years, leading to an unparalleled creative resurgence. The publication of this book came shortly before the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, but it already reflects a certain bleakness of outlook regarding contemporary life.
W. B. Yeats.Wild Swans of Coole.Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1917.
Proof copy, with Yeats’s notes, from Ezra Pound’s library.
In this landmark in Yeats’s oeuvre, he meditates on aging and mourns the death in combat of Lady Gregory’s son, Robert, in the poems “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” and “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory.”
Memorial card for Michael O’Callaghan, Republican mayor of Limerick.
Shortly after midnight in the early hours of March 7, 1921, the sitting mayor of Limerick, George Clancy, and his immediate predecessor,Michael O’Callaghan, were murdered in their homes by British forces, the so-called Black and Tans. Born in 1879, O’Callaghan had been active in nationalist organizations since 1905, speaking on the same stage as Padraic Pearse several times, ultimately becoming the mayor of Limerick in 1920. The printing by the Cuala Press of this “Requiscat” card, offering prayers for the repose of a martyred person, shows how the Yeats sisters’ sentiments had become increasingly sympathetic to the Republican cause in the years since the Easter Rising.
Oliver St. John Gogarty.An Offering of Swans.Dublin: Cuala Press, 1923.
Inscribed to Arthur Vincent.
Oliver St. John Gogarty played a central role in the Literary Revival, though he is remembered less today as a writer, playwright, poet, doctor, and Irish senator than as an inescapable wit and conversationalist. James Joyce made him the model for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. About Gogarty’s book of verse, An Offering of Swans, his longtime friend W. B. Yeats wrote, “there are careless lines now and again, traces of the old confused exuberance. He never stops long at his best, but how beautiful that best is, how noble, how joyous!”
W. B. Yeats.Cat and the Moon.Dublin: Cuala Press, 1924.
Inscribed to Lady Gregory, the dedicatee: “‘The Cat & the Moon’ was suggested by a story by Lady Gregory about the Well of St. Colman at Kiltartan W.B. Yeats.”With Lady Gregory’s bookplate.
Published as Yeats was on the cusp of turning sixty years old, Cat and the Moon includes works ranging from the title poem, perhaps reflecting on the nature of his relationship with Maud Gonne; to “Reflections in Time of Civil War,” looking back at the just-concluded Irish Civil War; to “Leda and the Swan,” which considers death through the prism of Greek myth and the Trojan War.
Pencil portrait. Signed by Elizabeth Yeats. From J. B. Yeats’s 1906 Dublin sketchbook given to John Quinn in New York City.
Autograph letter signed from Elizabeth Yeats to “Mr. Gates,” August 2, 1939.
Eight leaves on Cuala Industries Ltd. stationery.
In this extraordinary letter, Elizabeth Yeats recounts the history of the press, starting with its formation in 1904 as the Dun Emer Press and describing its trials and successes and ongoing financial challenges over the subsequent thirty-five years. Her brother W. B. Yeats had died six months earlier, at the end of January 1939. Elizabeth was to die just four months after the date of this letter, in January 1940. The Cuala Press continued on after the death of Elizabeth Yeats, under the supervision of W. B. Yeats’s widow, George.
Patrick Kavanagh.The Great Hunger.Dublin: Cuala Press, 1942.
Inscribed by Kavanagh, Dublin, June 22, 1944: “For my dear Friend / Ronnie Lyon / With the very warmest regards.”
Patrick Kavanagh was a self-taught poet raised on a small farm in County Monaghan. “He entered my head the way the potato digger enters the field at the start of his poem The Great Hunger,” wrote Seamus Heaney, “kicking the dead weight of the familiar into life.”The Irish Times named Kavanagh the second most popular Irish poet after Yeats, with ten of his poems, including his ‘Canal Bank” poetry and “On Raglan Road,” named among Ireland’s most popular poems.
