Poems (in its manifold editions) “became Yeats’ most enduring bibliographical self,” in part, Warwick Gould tells us, because he was forced to negotiate with Unwin himself. The poet even secured a limited issue of this fourth (1904) edition on full parchment boards with Gyles’ design (advertised on the verso of the half-title and priced at 10s. 6d. net).
Margaret Althea Gyles (1867-1949) was an Anglo-Irish writer, poet and artist best known for her book cover designs; despite a slim oeuvre she was a significant figure for the Celtic Revival, British Decadence and Symbolism. Yeats and Gyles met when they both lived in the Theosophical Commune at 3 Ely Place in Dublin and were also both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose mystical iconography fed into Gyles’ designs. While Yeats admired the “beauty of design” and “precise symbolism,” Gyles’ imagery was not for everyone: one contemporary critic disapproved of the inaccessibility of her design for a trade readership and thought hers “a sombre, mystical and weird imaginative power” (‘Modern Book Bindings’, 32). Befitting, then, for Yeats’ own mystical thrust.
Warwick Gould (2016) ‘Yeats and his Books’ in Essays in Honour of Eamonn Cantwell: Yeats Annual No. 20: A special number, pp. 3-70; Wade 19.