[Kavanagh (Patrick)].  A.E. [George Russell].  Verses for Fr...

Hammer

€2,100

[Kavanagh (Patrick)].  A.E. [George Russell].  Verses for Friends.  Dublin :  Printed for the Writer 1932.  12 pp, 12mo blue cloth titled in gilt on upper cover. Small inkstain on upper cover else VG.  Inscribed in AE’s hand on t.p., ‘Patrick Kavanagh / from AE Dec. 32’; further inscribed in Kavanagh’s, ‘Patrick Kavanagh / September / 1952 / 52 Pembroke Rd.’

An important association copy.  In 1929 ‘AE’ launched Kavanagh as a writer, accepting three poems for publication in his weekly The Irish Statesman (issues of 29 October 1929 and 15 February 1930). When the Statesman had to close after a libel action, he advised Kavanagh to send his work to Seamus O’Sullivan at the Dublin Magazine, where three poems appeared in December 1931. A week before Christmas 1931, Kavanagh set off to Dublin, turned up at AE’s doorstep in Rathgar unannounced, and was welcomed and invited in. In the few years remaining before his death in 1935, Russell wrote frequently to Kavanagh with advice and encouragement. In December 1939 the trustees of the AE Memorial Fund gave Kavanagh their award of £100 (then a useful amount) for promising Irish writers under 35.