[Rarebooks] FS: W.B. Yeats' third book and first prose work, 1891

[Michael John Thompson]

Offered today for immediate sale at $200 USD Net postpaid in North America. 
 
 
YEATS, William Butler [as by GANCONAGH].
 
JOHN SHERMAN AND DHOYA by GANCONAGH [pseudonym].
 
London: T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square MDCCCXCI [1891].
 
Second Edition. Tall narrow octavo, 7 x 3½ inches. Issued as a volume in the publisher's Pseudonym Library. Bound without covers along with two other works in the same series in pebbled red cloth titled and ruled in gilt on spine. Pp iv., 196; half-title with publisher's monogram and the words Pseudonym Library at foot, verso with list of the first 10 volumes in the Pseudonym Library [ending with this title as No. 10]. This Second Edition appears to be identical with the first edition which was published in November 1891 in both cloth and paper wrappers; as this issue is also dated 1891 it was issued within a month of the First Edition.
 
This copy is bound up with CAVALLERIA RUSTICA And Other Tales of Sicilian Peasant Life by Giovanni Verga (1893, No 29 in the series] and the Anonymously published THE HERB OF LOVE [by G. Drosinēs]. These later works are both 1st editions, THE HERB OF LOVE is a supernatural tale set on the Greek island of Euboea. Very light fading to spine panel, endpapers browned, early ink name on front free endpaper; a very good, clean copy; quite nice.

¶ Yeats' third book and first prose work, "Written when I was very young & knew no better." The first edition of this book has always been very scarce and the Wade Bibliography attributes the figure of 2,000 copies for the first edition (1,644 in paper, 356 in cloth). More recent research has suggested that this figure of 2,000 copies encompasses "at least" both the first and second "editions", it seeming virtually certain that they were printed simultaneously. This second edition is decidedly rarer than copies of the first issue; the 1894 "third edition" is also likely just a binding up of leftover sheets.
List Price $350.00 US 
Sale Price $200.00 US Postpaid
 
https://www.thompsonrarebooks.com/book.php?id=313417
 
 
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Michael John Thompson, Antiquarian Bookseller
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Hornby Island, BC
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http://www.ThompsonRareBooks.com

Past President of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of Canada.
Rare books and associated material bought and sold and appraised.