YEATS (W.B.)


Photograph, signed on the image and inscribed "For Belinda Duncan from WB Yeats Nov 24 1932", showing an immaculately suited Yeats half-length, seated in an armchair, reading a book on his lap, gelatin-silver print, with narrow margins, a few very minor creases etc. at the edges but overall in good and attractive condition, overall 245 x 195mm., 24 November 1932
|'FROM WB YEATS' – A FINE AND UNUSUAL PHOTOGRAPH OF YEATS, signed a few days after publication of one of his greatest volumes, Words for Music, Perhaps (14 November, containing poems such as 'Byzantium', 'Vacillation', 'Coole Park 1929' and 'Coole Park and Ballylee 1932'). The dedicatee was the wife of Yeats's friend Alan Duncan. They had emigrated to Paris in 1924, where they were to become good friends with Samuel Beckett, whom they met through James Joyce: 'Joyce adored Belinda Duncan, who could match him drink for drink, and he paid her his ultimate compliment by inserting her into Finnegans Wake as the "little hen of the dorans"' (Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, 1990, p.96).After Alan Duncan's death, Belinda married Brian Lunn, whose daughter Brigit gave this photograph to the present owner.