Harper, Margaret Mills; Yeats, William Butler; Yeats, George

Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W.B. Yeats

ISBN: 0199289166
New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press, 2006. First Edition. Hardcover. Inscribed, signed & dated by Margaret Mills Harper to George Bornstein. “The library of W.B. and George Yeats was housed for many years at the home of their daughter, the painter Anne Yeats, in Dalkey, a quiet suburb of Dublin that is now famous for its celebrity-studded exclusivity. Books and papers lined three walls of the room, and a picture window looked into a garden lit with bright flowers and the island’s continually changing sky. The collection no longer has this setting; it has been bequeathed to the National Library of Ireland. Scholars cannot learn now what I studied there, while I was ostensibly on scholarly missions but in fact, I now think, conducting research into a sense of wonder, forgetting various doubts in the presence of Anne Yeats’s delight in the world and how it might be expressed. I hope that this study retains some of that wonder…”--Margaret Mills Harper, “Preface,” pg. vii. Margaret Mills Harper (b. 1957), is a scholar, writer, and professor emeritus of Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick and is a specialist in the life and works of W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), the legendary Irish poet. Offered today is Harper’s 2006 work Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W.B. Yeats. This masterfully authoritative volume explores the relationship & collaboration between W.B. Yeats and his wife Georgiana Hyde-Lees. The two married in October 1917—the same time that the great Bolshevik Revolution was occurring, and a year before The Great War came to a tragic, bloody conclusion—and by all accounts were not only madly in love, but also close literary collaborators. Wisdom of Two is an incredibly in-depth and endlessly fascinating look into the often overlooked influence of George Yeats on the life and work of her husband. From back cover: “Georgie Hyde Lees, who married W.B. Yeats in the autumn of 1917, has for many years occupied a secondary or even marginal position in most studies of her famous husband. She has been depicted as a poor choice for romantic partner, political comrade, or literary collaborator. While often thanked in the acknowledgments pages and regarded as a minor editor or secretary, she usually receives only footnote status in literary analyses. Most often, she has been cast as an amateur spirit medium or, less generously, as a manipulative perpetrator of an elaborate mystical and sexual hoax out of which arose Yeats’s philosophical treatise A Vision and a raft of poetry, plays, and other literary works. Yet George Yeats co-wrote the automatic script and co-created the ‘system’ of cosmic geometry, based on a dialectics of desire. Coming to terms with the ‘system’ is vital to understanding the late work of the poet, yet a thorough critical study of the Yeats’ ‘incredible experience’ has never been written…” From the collection of the late, great George Bornstein (1941-2021), scholar, author & academician at the University of Michigan- a quintessential Man of Letters, whose main specialty was the Irish poets and writers, especially W.B. Yeats. Signed, inscribed & dated in thin blue ink at title page by the author to Bornstein: “To George, with / great love — / Meg / August 2006.” Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket. First edition as stated “First Published 2006” at copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. Book in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges. Dust jacket relatively fine with minor wear to fine edges, slight tear near top of spine, and light smudging/scratching to front and back covers. Very Fine / Fine. [Item #9557]

Price: $150.00 save 10% $135.00