Yeats’ work fetches over €100,000 at auction

A VALUABLE literary collection including letters and a manuscript by WB Yeats fetched stg£72,000 (€104,572) at auction in London yesterday.

The collection was mounted in an album by Sir Sydney Cockerell, a friend of Yeats, and book collector, connoisseur and museum director.

It includes 18 letters signed by Yeats to Sir Sydney as well as a manuscript of his essay, The Tragic Theatre, written in 1910.

The letters date from 1902 to 1932 and include discussions of his own work as well as other art and literature.

Yeats, who was born in Dublin, is a key figure in Irish literature, winning the Nobel prize for his plays and now recognised for his later poetry.

Educated both in England and Ireland, as a young man he was part of the London literary crowd at the turn of the century while also attempting to revive the tradition of literature in his homeland. Yeats was a patriot but often railed against the hatred and bigotry of some nationalists.

He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. His volumes of poetry including The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) and The Tower (1928). He died in 1939.