Three Things. Drawings by Gilbert Spencer. London: Faber, 1929. First Edition, Limited Issue. Publisher’s light blue paper boards, title in gold to upper cover. Worn along the spine, boards lightly toned, contents in nice bright condition.

Limited Edition of 500 Large Paper Copies, printed on Handmade Paper Numbered & Signed by W.B. Yeats.

No 18 of The Ariel Poems with a half-title drawing and full page colour plate by Gilbert Spencer.

Three Things is a small masterpiece of Yeats’s late middle period: compressed, musical, and unflinching in its confrontation with mortality. The 1929 Faber edition, with Spencer’s restrained drawings, is a handsome artifact of the Ariel Poems series and a reminder of how seriously interwar publishers took the presentation of poetry.