YEATS, W.B. The Winding Stair and Other Poems. London: Macmillan & Co. 1933.
8vo. Original green cloth with famous design by T. Sturge Moore stamped in gilt on spine and in blind on upper cover; pages untrimmed and partially unopened; green paper dust wrapper with Moore's pictorial design and advertisements to rear wrapper; pp. x, 101, [3]; minor offsetting to final blank; otherwise near fine.
An advance review copy with uncut pages and "Advance Review Copy Special Notice" tipped-in on title page with a stamped publication date of 19 September 1933.
Published when he was sixty-eight, The Winding Stair is inspired by an architectural feature in Thoor Ballylee Castle, Yeats's
ancient Norman tower in County Galway. The building was of enormous significance in Yeats's personal system of symbolism. Thoor Ballylee represented a link to a noble, exalted Irish history, while the winding stair itself appears in the third poem of the collection, "A Dialogue of Self and Soul", as a vehicle of spiritual progress: "My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; /Set all your mind upon the steep ascent…".
#2121257