A BOOK OF SAINTS AND WONDERS PUT DOWN HERE BY LADY GREGORY ACCORDING TO THE OLD WRITINGS AND THE MEMORY OF THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
Author: Gregory, Isabella Augusta (Lady)
Title: A BOOK OF SAINTS AND WONDERS PUT DOWN HERE BY LADY GREGORY ACCORDING TO THE OLD WRITINGS AND THE MEMORY OF THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
Publication: Dundrum, Ireland: Dun Emer Press, 1906
Edition: First Edition, Llimited to 200 copies
Description: Hardcover. Octavo, one of only two-hundred copies printed. Stitch-bound into the characteristic Cuala Press linen-backed boards with paper spine label (now faded), Sunning to external boards and endpapers. Blue-gray endpapers. Fore-edge and tail, untrimmed. Interior pages, bright and supple to the turn. Several pages unopened. Printed in black and red. 100 pages. Colophon in red on the hundredth page reads, in part: "...Two hundred copies of this book have been printed upon paper made in Ireland, and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats at the Dun Emer Press, in the house of Evelyn Gleeson at Dundrum in the County of Dublin, Ireland, finished on the Eve of Lady Day in Harvest, in the year 1906.". Red emblem by Robert Gregory (Fish, Bell, Waterfall) opposite page 1.
Lady Gregory was an Irish playwright (writing or translating more than forty plays), folklorist and theatre director, and has been called (in a documentary about her life) "Ireland's first social influencer" Good Plus.
The Dun Emer / Cuala Press, considered from both the literary and the book arts perspectives, constitutes one of the most important private presses of the 20th centuryif not of the fine press movement as a whole. At the confluence of the Irish Literary Revival and the Arts & Crafts Movement, the early 20th century witnessed the germination and flowering of the modern Irish nation, a community so ardently imagined by prophetic writers in the Celtic Twilight (and published by Dun Emer and Cuala Press) which included writers such as the author of this work -- Lady Gregory, as well as AE (George Russell), Lord Dunsany, and at their forefront poet William Butler Yeats.
In 1902, Elizabeth and her sister Lily Yeats joined Evelyn Gleeson in establishing a craft studio at Dundrum, near Dublin, called Dun Emer, which specialized in printing and other crafts, with Elizabeth Yeats in charge of the printing press. A family affair, Dun Emer/Cuala Press included artwork by W.B. Yeats's brother Jack Yeats, presswork by sister Elizabeth Yeats, with creative writing and editorial work by the most famous Yeats himself....
Tribute to William Morris is seen both in the literary character of the texts published by Cuala Press but also in the binding style of the physical books. These works proved vital to the raising of national consciousness in the 19th century and the shaping of the incipient Republic of Ireland in the early 20th century.
In 1908, about two years after this book's 1906 publication, the two entities parted ways - Elizabeth Yeats and her sister, Lily, established Cuala Press in Dublin, while Evelyn Gleeson, the Yeats's original partners in the creative endeavor, retained the other aspects of the studio under the name Dun Emer, concentrating upon fine textiles and their mission of providing Irish women with a solid trade.
Cuala Press published some seventy-plus titles into the 1940s, lay in "suspended animation" for twenty-five years, and would be revived during the years 1969-1989 by author Thomas Kinsella, Liam Miller, Michael and Anne Yeats.
Seller ID: 88734
Subject: Irish and Ireland
