The Avatars. A Futurist Fantasy. London: Macmillan, 1933. First Edition. Pp, 188. Publisher’s dark navy cloth, title in gilt to upper cover and spine, in dust jacket (inner hinges repaired). A very good copy. Housed in collector’s solander box.

Inscribed by AE to James Stephens & with an attractive colour crayon sketch on title page & nine others as chapter-heads through the text. Also with an annotated correction & a number of strike-outs in the author’s hand to the text.

James Stephens (1882-1950) was working as a solicitor’s clerk and educating himself when he first met the Irish poet & mystic A.E. (George Russell). Russell became his friend and mentor & helped him publish his first book of poems ‘Insurrections’ in 1909 – which Stephens dedicated: ‘To A.E. These.’ 

James Stephens went on to write poems and novels during the Irish Literary Renaissance & was well regarded by his contemporaries including James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore, and Oliver St. John Gogarty.