The National Being: Some Thoughts On An Irish Polity.

RUSSELL, George [A.E].

$975.00

Item Number: 110589

Dublin and London: Maunsel & Company, Ltd, 1916.

First edition of Russell’s essay on the nation of Ireland. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel. Signed by the author and with an original colored pencil and ink drawing of the hills of Ireland on the title page, “George Russell A.E.” In near fine condition.

Writing under the pseudonym Æ, or A.E., Irish writer, editor, poet, and painter George Russell was a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which met in Dublin for many years. An Irish nationalist, his first book of poems, Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894), established him in what was known as the Irish Literary Revival, where Æ met the young James Joyce in 1902 and introduced him to other Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats.