THE POEMS OF W. B. YEATS (2 VOLUMES, SIGNED); The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Definitive edition with the Authors Final Revisions

London, England: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1949. Limited, Numbered, Signed Edition (9/375). Hardcover. Near Fine in mylar, and housed in a slipcase.. Quartos. (10 3/16" x 6 1/4"). Two-volume set in beveled green cloth with bright gilt monogram device to front boards. . This edition limited to 375 copies, of which 350 were for sale. No. 9 of 375, signed by the author on the limitation page, published after his death. Printed on specially made Glastonbury Ivory Toned Antique Laid Paper, manufactured by Messrs. John Dickinson and Co. Ltd. The type selected is Fournier. The work was published on November 25, 1949. A tissue-guarded frontispiece of Volume I is a reproduction of a drawing by John S. Sargent of a young Yeats, and in Volume II, the frontis is from a painting of an older Yeats, by Augustus John.Very faint rubbing to lower corners, and a tiny bump to the outer edge of Volume II. Housed in a beige, cloth-covered and suede-lined slipcase, with some brown staining to one side.

Prospectus laid in, and reads, in part: "A Definitive edition limited to 350 Sets Signed by the Author. It was known that "for some time before his death, W. B Yeats was engaged in revising the text of this edition of his poems, of which he had corrected the proofs, and for which he had signed the special page to appear at the beginning of Volume I. The outbreak of the Second World War, however, came at a crucial stage in the production of the work, and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. Ltd. had to consider the effects of austre conditions on a publication which had been projected on a lavish scale and which, after the untimely death of this great writer, would have formed a worthy monument to him. It was finally decided that production should be discontinued until after the war, and it is only now, a decade later, that it has become possible to offer the work as it was originally planned." A brief note on possible provenance: Although the precise chain of ownership of this set is rather weak, and tangled up the sundry marital (and storied extramarital) pursuits of the former Lady O'Neill (Shane Castle in Antrim) then Viscountess Rothermere (Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming), the books originally belonged to English classical scholar and Oxford don Maurice Bowra and then, it was believed passed (via Lady O'Neill?) to Lord O'Neill's second successor in marriage, author and James Bond-creator Ian Fleming. Front pastedown bears a rather home (read computer-)made-looking sticker reading "ex libris / Maurice Bowra", with some light penciling concerning Lord and Lady O'Neill, and the date 17-12-03.