Althea Gyles and W.B. Yeats
Sally North
Holythorn Press
The first dedicated book on the life and work of Anglo-Irish artist and poet Althea Gyles. Contains an extended essay on her artistic career which includes her collaborations with W. B. Yeats and Joseph Holbrooke. Incuded are previously unpublished poems and prose, and a lost artwork discovered by author Sally North.
A cloth-bound limited edition of 200 copies only, with exclusive bookmark and three postcards showcasing images from Gyles's work.Althea Gyles (1867-1949) was an enigmatic Anglo-Irish poet and artist. Born into wealth and high social status, she defied the conventions of her family and her times to forge an independent life in bohemian London of the 1890s. Collaborating with W. B. Yeats on some of his most iconic book covers. He himself publicly praised her work, saying "One finds in them what a friend, whose work has no other passion, calls “the passion for the impossible beauty"; for the beauty which cannot be seen with the bodily eyes, or pictured otherwise than by symbols.
"A scandalous love affair with the notorious publisher Leonard Smithers and subsequent breakdown leading to long hospitalisation ended her career for a time. She retired to the south coast and almost complete obscurity to spend the rest of her life writing, and campaigning for animal welfare.
In Mysterious Rose Sally North situates Gyles not as a tragic side-note to more famous characters, but as an important person in her own right. If Althea Gyles was only remembered for her book cover designs, she would still have to be acknowledged as an important and original designer whose small output in no way defines her quality
90 pp with 17 illustrations.
Cloth bound with headbands and foiling and decorative endpapers.
122 x 150 x 12 mm
