Yeats William Butler Robinson Lennox (3 results)

Condition: Very good. (New Rochelle, NY): Spoken Arts Inc., circa [1959]. [1959]. Very good. - sc - Quarto [12-1/4 inches square]. A 33-1/3 rpm long-playing record in original pictorial cardboard sleeve designed by Scott. The sleeve is lightly bumped with some light foxing & soiling to the edges. The disc itself is only very lightly used with virtually no surface noise. Very good. As a young playwright who had had a play performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Lennox Robinson [1886-1958] was appointed Manager and Producer at the theatre by Yeats, and this business relationship developed into a close friendship over the years. This record includes readings of poems by Yeats and Robinson's memories of the poet and playwright.

Newspaper format, folio (45cm) 8pp, unstapled. Artwork by Cecil Salkeld to p. 3. Clean throughout. Small tape repairs to folds, and one small marginal stain. The writer F.C. Molloy summed up the very brief innings of this Irish monthly paper in the 'Yeats Annual': 'It is a regrettable truism that literary periodicals usually have a short life, but the case of To-morrow is worse than most. Only two issues appeared in Irish bookshops in August and September 1924, and then, without notice, publication ceased. Yet associated with the periodical were two of Ireland's major literary figures at the time: Lennox Robinson and W. B. Yeats, as well as several younger writers Liam O'Flaherty, Francis Stuart and F. R. Higgins. The brevity of its life can be attributed to a number of factors the inexperience of the editors, the unwillingness of some literary figures to give public support, together with lack of support from other sources but most of all To-morrow was a victim of an increasingly vociferous obscurantism which saw in this journal all that was immoral, anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. For some indeed it was proof that the Irish people needed protection from certain kinds of literature, so pressure for the censorship of publications increased.'.

2 issues. Large folio. (448 x 288 mm). [2 bifolia: pp. 8; bifolium + inserted leaf: pp. 6]. Printed text recto and verso in English (and German) in columns throughout, large monochrome woodcut illustration by Cecil Salkeld to each issue Loose as issued. The rare, short-lived and suppressed Irish literary periodical 'TO-MORROW' with the first appearance of Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan'. Edited by Cecil Salkeld and Henry Stuart, 'TO-MORROW', despite its optimistic and future-looking title and the solicitation for content and subscription announcements, saw only two issues in 1924, for August and September. The editors had, however, secured contributions, a poem ('TO-MORROW' saw the first publication of 'Leda and the Swan') and an anonymous editorial, from Nobel Laureate W. B. Yeats, Liam O'Flaherty and Lennox Robinson as well as many others (see below) and aimed to publish a forum for new Irish poetry and prose that was inclusive and expansive. Unfortunately, 'TO-MORROW' was also controversial and was suppressed despite the support of Yeats and others; not only did 'TO-MORROW' fail to invigorate Irish art and bring about a free Irish Renaissance, it helped usher in a climate of further repression, supression and censorship. The first issue included prose works such as O'Flaherty's 'A Red Petticoat', Robinson's 'The Madonna of Slieve Dun', Salkeld's 'The Principles of Painting', Margaret Barrington's 'Colour' and L. K. Emery's manifesto-like 'A Primitive'. Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan' led the poetry section that also included work by Charlotte Arthur, F. R. Higgins, Joseph Campbell and R. N. D. Wilson. A sonnet in German by O. F. Fleck was also published. The second issue was in similar format, a mixture of prose and poetry, opening with Arthur Symons' appreciation of Honoré Daumier, featuring the conclusion of Salkeld's 'The Principles of Painting', as well as 'The Poplar Road' by Iseult Stuart, H. Stuart's 'In the Hour Before Dawn', 'The Garden' by Sachka and 'The Tendencies of the Younger Irish Poetry' by L. K. Emery. Poetry included further contributions from Charlotte Arthur, R. N. D. WIlson and F. R. Higgins as well as a poem by Blanaid Salkeld. O. F. FLeck contributed another poem, 'An P'. Each issue included a large woodcut by Cecil Salkeld. 'In August 1924, a small literary magazine, To-Morrow, went on sale in Dublin. As its title implies, the magazine's editors, Francis Stuart and Cecil Salkeld, were buoyed with optimism. They hoped for a new cultural movement in the arts that would parallel its development and, in turn, influence the newly founded Irish Free State.' (Bernard McKenna). 'My dream is a wild paper of the young which will make enemies everywhere and suffer suppression, I hope a number of times, with the logical assertion, with all fitting deductions, of the immortality of the soul.' (Yeats writing to Olivia Shakespeare). 'TO-MORROW' is necessarily fragile and the present copy has been folded in half with ensuing wear. The first issue does have small areas of discolouration and slight separation along the fold but is otherwise good; the second issue is in good condition. [see Bernard McKenna's 'Yeats, 'Leda', and the Aesthetics of To-Morrow: 'The Immortality of the Soul', in Vol. 13, No. 2 of the 'New Hibernia Review', 2009].