In Wicklow and West Kerry and Connemara. With Drawings by Jack B. Yeats. Dublin: Maunsel, 1911. First Edition. Pp , 245, uncut, top edge gilt. Publisher’s dark blue cloth, upper cover with gilt title and double gilt rules; Bookplate to pastedown, scattered light foxing to contents, otherwise a nice bright copy.

With eight plates of drawings by Jack B. Yeats and fourteen essays written by John Millington Synge during his travels through counties Wicklow, Kerry and Galway in the early 1900’s.

Originally published in the “Manchester Guardian” and in a quarterly Irish literary magazine “The Shanachie” the essays are a valuable document on the inhabitants and their social conditions at the turn of the century. It also contains fragments of folklore, patterns of speech and proverbs which formed the raw material for some of his plays.