Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, educated in London, and at the high school and Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. He settled in London, moving in literary, aesthetic, theosophical and spiritualistic circles. He established himself as an imaginative writer with The Celtic Twilight in 1893 and Poems in 1895, followed by the more sophistacated and stylized The Secret Rose in 1897.
Yeats was stimulated by his friendship with John O'Leary and Maud Gonne, who was to be the subject of his love poetry. By 1899 Yeats produced The Countess Cathleen in Dublin and subsequently established the Abbey Theatre as a national institution. Yeats won the Nobel prize for literature in 1923 and with G.B. Shaw and G.W. Russell, founded the Irish Academy of Letters in 1932.
The Secret Rose.
With Illustrations by J. B. Yeats.
Lawrence & Bullen, 1897.
Dark blue vertically ribbed cloth with elaborate gilt design spine and both sides by Althea Gyles, all edges uncut. Frontispiece and six other plates by the author's artist brother. It appears that on the demise of the firm of Lawrence & Bullen, A.H. Bullen issued a number of copies which bear his name alone at foot of spine.
