Yeats, Bullen, and the Irish Drama

YEATS, BULLEN, AND THE IRISH DRAMA THE LATE MR. P. S. O'HEGARTY OF DUBLIN was a man of many worthy interests; a scholar, historian, editor, book-dealer and controversialist, he was, most of all, a bibliophile and a passionate collector of books about Ireland and by Irishmen.1 Unlike many book lovers, he remained systematic in his collecting and cataloguing of books by people that he knew and liked in the stormy early decades of the twentieth century. By the time of his death in 1955 his large personal library of some twenty thousand volumes had become a remarkable cache of material relating to the Irish literary and political renaissance and he an authoritative bibliographer of William Butler Yeats.2 Early in 1954 he wrote to a book dealer: I have been seriously considering selling some of my books while I can myself supervise the arrangements. I never collected fashions. If I liked an author I collected him, even though he was never likely to prove a gold mine. So that many of my most cherished sets of firsts, e.g. Carlyle, Browning, Conrad, Galsworthy, are no use to a sinking ship. But I have five sets that should realize something, viz: Yeats: Everything except Mosada and the 1903 Hourglass; plus a complete set of the Dun Emer and Cuala including the broadsides ;3 things like the Green Sheaf, and the Elkin Matthews Broadsheets , the Savoy, Dome, and all sorts of things.... Many of them are presentation copies with inscriptions, and there is a typescript of Nine Poems, and there are about 80 autograph letters, many of them holograph.... In 1955, Mr. Robert Vosper, Director of Libraries at the University of Kansas, completed negotiations for the purchase of Mr. O'Hegarty's collection of Yeats; in October of that year, O'Hegarty wrote that Pickering and Chatto's agent had picked up the first consignment, and that "as I went over the books, I could not help thinking that it is a very nice and satisfactory collection." The collection more than justifies his proper scholar's satisfaction, for it lacks in significant entries only the extremely scarce Mosada and Hourglass, which he mentioned, and some American editions. It includes, however, several items not in Wade, some of which I have noted. This survey of the Watson Library 1. For a brief appreciative note see Colm 0 Lochlainn, "P. S. O'Hegarty," Books and Libraries at the University of Kansas, Vol. 1, Number 13, November, 19·56. 2. See Allan Wade, A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats, 2nd edition, London, 1958, p. 9 and elsewhere. 3. A "complete" set of the Dun Emer and Cuala Presses is difficult to determine, but I see no reason to doubt Mr. O'Hegarty's claim. His collection adds seventeen titles to the list published by Wade, Bibliography, Appendix r, pp. 399 ff. Wade probably carried the publications of these presses down to the time of Yeats' death even though there were subsequently published two Yeats volumes: Last Poems, and Two Plays, 1939, 500 copies; and If I Were Four and Twenty. 1940. 450 copies. 196 1958 YEATS, Buu..EN, AND TIlE ImsH DRAMA 197 holding does not, of course, exhaust the O'Hegarty collection,4 but is concerned chiefly with those things that are of special interest and use to students of the Irish drama and Yeats' plays. In what follows I have particularly mentioned books, periodicals, and letters which may contribute critical, biographical, textual, or bibliographical information about Yeats. I. The Abbey Theatre Series, 20 volumes, I-XV, Maunsel and Company, Dublin, 1905-11. These are the Abbey Theatre 'Wolfhound" plays, so called after the cover design of Elinor Monsell. Wade records Yeats' direct contributions as Volumes IV and VI; but it is likely that his editorial and critical opinions are reflected in most of the volumes. II. Abbey Theatre Programmes: 171 programmes of the Abbey Theatre from 1904-1922. Mr. Ollegarty noted that at the time of his purchase of these playbills from Mr. W. J. Lawrence in 1922, it was guaranteed to be a full set from the beginning as the Irish National Theatre Society down to...