The Edition de Luxe

Abstract

By 1926 Yeats’s works had already been the subject of two collected editions: the eight volumes of the sumptuous Collected Works in Verse & Prose issued by the Shakespeare Head Press in 1908; and the more mundane series of six volumes issued by Macmillan over a period of five years (Later Poems, 1922; Plays in Prose and Verse, 1922; Plays and Controversies, 1923; Essays, 1924; Early Poems and Stories, 1925; Autobiographies, 1926). The latter series, though, was something of a putative collected edition. The title “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats” appears only in the final two volumes — and only at the end of each book. And of course the gathering was incomplete, the 1925 A Vision being the most notable exclusion.