PAST SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS
THE KING LIBRARY PRESS
AND
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
invite you to a Spring Book Arts Lecture
A FAMILY AFFAIR:
THE YEATSES & THE CUALA PRESS
DR. DECLAN KIELY Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts The Pierpont Morgan Library New York City Friday, 8 May 2009 7:00 P.M. The Great Hall Special Collections Library Margaret I. King Building Reception Follows — Free & Open to All —
Elizabeth Corbet Yeats founded The Cuala Press and its predecessor, The Dun Emer Press, in County Dublin, Ireland. The earlier venture, begun in 1903, was a project of Dun Emer Industries, established to train and employ young Irish women. Elizabeth Yeats was previously involved with Arts and Crafts activities in England. One of the most lasting contributions of the Arts and Crafts movement was the work of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press — devoted to creating beautiful books by hand methods. Elizabeth Yeats’s interests brought about an extraordinary coalescence of feminism, the graphic arts, and the Irish Literary Revival, or Celtic Renaissance.
In 1908 Elizabeth Yeats moved her publishing activity into Dublin and changed its name to The Cuala Press (Cuala being an early name for Dublin). Using an Albion hand press, Caslon Old Style types, and Irish papers, she produced sixty-two books before her death in 1940. The Cuala Press continued under the direction of her sister-in-law Georgie Yeats until 1946, producing books, broadsides, bookplates, and cards.
The press brought out work by many of the most significant writers of its time. Most notable was the work of Elizabeth Yeats’s brother William Butler Yeats, winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her sister Susan Yeats and her artist brother Jack Yeats also contributed to the success of the press.
Elizabeth Corbet Yeats (at the press) with her friends Esther Ryan and Beatrice Cassidy, ca. 1903. Frontispiece to Roderick Cave, The Private Press (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1971), used by permission of Roderick Cave.
A press mark of The Cuala Press, from W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson, Poetry and Ireland (Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1908).