Superb Set of the Yeats & Ellis Edition of Blake, the Ledoux copies
The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Edited with Lithographs of the Illustrated "Prophetic Books," and a Memoir and Interpretation by Edwin J. Ellis and William Butler Yeats.
London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893.
Price:
$4,500.00
First Edition, limited to 500 copies. There was a large paper edition (One of 150) bound in leather but the regular edition, as here, is more desirable on account of the lavish gilt publisher’s binding. 3 portraits, 2 folding charts, approx. 312 reproductions from the illuminated books. xiv, 420; viii, 436; x, 100, 2; 176 pp. 3 vols. Royal 8vo. Volumes: 3. Original grass green cloth, heavily stamped in gilt, t.e.g, brown endpapers. Light rubbing to edges of binding. A VERY FINE COPY. Bentley 369; Wade, Yeats Bibliography, 218. Provenance: Louis V. Ledoux (bookplate in each vol.).
Item #375973
Bentley 369: "The enthusiasm and comprehensiveness of this work are of considerable historical importance..."
Wade, Yeats Bibliography, 218, quoting a letter from Yeats: "The writing of this book is mainly Ellis's, the thinking is as much mine as his. The biography is by him. He re-wrote and trebled in size a biography of mine. The greater part of the ‘symbolic system’ is my writing; the rest of the book was written by Ellis working over short accounts of the books by me, except in the case of the 'literary period' the account of the minor poems, & the account of Blake’s art theories which are all his own except in so far as we discussed everything together."
Item #375973
Bentley 369: "The enthusiasm and comprehensiveness of this work are of considerable historical importance..."
Wade, Yeats Bibliography, 218, quoting a letter from Yeats: "The writing of this book is mainly Ellis's, the thinking is as much mine as his. The biography is by him. He re-wrote and trebled in size a biography of mine. The greater part of the ‘symbolic system’ is my writing; the rest of the book was written by Ellis working over short accounts of the books by me, except in the case of the 'literary period' the account of the minor poems, & the account of Blake’s art theories which are all his own except in so far as we discussed everything together."
