The Secret Rose. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., & London: Lawrence & Bullen,1897. First American Edition. Pp, (xi), 265, uncut. Original blue cloth, binding design by Althea Gyles, covers and spine richly decorated in gilt. A particularly attractive copy.
The American edition was made up from sheets of London edition, with title page tipped in. A volume of symbolic and visionary tales, a product of Yeats's profound interest in the occult. It is dedicated to George Russell (AE), who had encouraged Yeats to pursue his experiments with magic and symbolism, when the latter had been a student at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. Yeats wrote: 'The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.' [Wade 22].