BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 20 “A Peak Of English Poetry”: First Edition Of The Winding Stair, Signed By Yeats 22YEATS, William Butler. The Winding Stair. New York, 1929. Octavo, original gilt-stamped dark blue cloth, custom clamshell box. $4500 Signed limited first edition, one of only 642 copies, signed on the half title by Yeats. The Winding Stair, along with The Tower (published in 1928), contains “the greatest poetry of Yeats in his difficult later manner… a peak in English poetry” (Connolly 56B). “Many critics have felt that Yeats’ greatest achievement was the development of a symbolic language to express an equilibrium between the conflicting demands on the poet of the outside world and his art… This theme is central to the two volumes which are often thought to be Yeats’ best, The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1929)” (Hamilton, 595). Both titles refer to Thoor Ballylee, the Norman tower that Yeats purchased, restored and dedicated to his wife Georgie Hyde-Lees. The Winding Stair includes one of Yeats’ most resonant and bestknown poems, “A Dialogue of Self and Soul.” Without scarce original glassine and slipcase. An about-fine copy with very faint discoloration to boards. “Who, If I Cried Out, Would Hear Me Among The Angels’ Hierarchies?” 23RILKE, Rainer Maria. Duineser Elegien. Leipzig, 1923. Tall quarto, publisher’s full green crushed morocco gilt, custom clamshell box. $5000 Deluxe limited large-paper first edition, one of only 300 copies, this copy one of the first 100 copies specially bound at the Wiener Werkstadt. Rilke spent the winter of 1911-12 at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea as a guest of his friend Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe. “With this work as well as his Orphean Sonnets, Rilke “felt that he had fulfilled the demand made on him by his genius… Beyond all doubt is his standing as one of the great poets of the 20th century” (Garland, 753). Text in German. Without original plain paper dust jacket and cardboard slipcase, often not present. Text fine, inner hinges starting, original deluxe binding with one faint scratch to rear board, very mild toning to spine. A near-0fine copy.
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