YEATS, W[illiam] B[utler].
The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi.
A very good copy of the “de-luxe” issue, printed on better paper and hardbound, in an unspecified number of copies. This was preceded by the “privately printed” edition of 1897, in fact published by A.H. Bullen, who had rejected these two stories from The Secret Rose which he published that year. “The Adoration of the Magi” was then rejected because its “theme of a religious annunciation relayed through a dying prostitute in a Paris brothel was too blasphemous, as well as too Decadent, for Bullen’s nerve” (Foster). Yeats’s prefatory note “I do not think that I should have reprinted them had I not met a young man in Ireland the other day, who liked them very much and nothing else that I have written.” refers to his disturbing encounter the previous year with James Joyce, who famously told him “I have met you too late. You are too old.”, but less famously could recite “The Adoration of the Magi” off by heart.
The cataloguer notes in passing the similarity in binding style (though not in size) with the revised format of the Dun Emer, later Cuala, Press, operated by Yeats’s sisters, and wonders if there was some interaction with Bullen.
