Synopses & Reviews
Unavailable for decades, The Tower is W.B. Yeats's famously beautiful volume of twenty-one poems, some of which are the master's most beloved. Now, with this exact yet affordable facsimile, readers can own a piece of literary history. The Tower first appeared in stores on Valentine's Day, 1928, and is regarded as the single most important collection of poetry in the long and distinguished career of W.B. Yeats, and one of the seminal volumes of modern poetry in general. "Mr. Yeats has never written more exactly and more passionately, " wrote Virginia Woolf, and many critics have since echoed her judgment. Bound in an olive green cloth binding that was stamped with a goldleaf design by T. Sturge Moore, the slender volume was truly a work of art. Within it could be found some of Yeats's most famous poems, including "Sailing to Byzantium, " "Leda and the Swan, " and "Among School Children." Though many of its poems have since been collected in a variety of editions and volumes, only in The Tower do they appea in the original order and arrangement that Yeats intended. With this facsimile edition, readers can enjoy the work as it was first presented all those years ago, in bold text, elegant design, and the notes supplied by Yeats himself. Including photographs of the original dust jacket and cover design, as well as an Introduction that traces the book's creation and later revision, The Tower: A Facsimile Edition makes a brilliant classic accessible once again to readers everywhere.
Synopsis
The first edition of W. B. Yeats's
The Tower appeared in bookstores in London on Valentine's Day, 1928. His English publisher printed just 2,000 copies of this slender volume of twenty-one poems, priced at six shillings. The book was immediately embraced by book buyers and critics alike, and it quickly became a bestseller.
Subsequent versions of the volume made various changes throughout, but this Scribner facsimile edition reproduces exactly that seminal first edition as it reached its earliest audience in 1928, adding an introduction and notes by esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran.
Written between 1912 and 1927, these poems ("Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," and "Among School Children" among them) are today considered some of the best and most famous in the entire Yeats canon. As Virginia Woolf declared in her unsigned review of this collection, "Mr. Yeats has never written more exactly and more passionately."
About the Author
William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland's greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most
important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
Table of Contents
ContentsPreface
Introduction
The Tower (1928)
Notes to Yeats's Notes
Notes to the Poems