WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, et al. THE BOOK OF THE RHYMERS' CLUB & THE SECOND BOOK OF THE RHYMERS' CLUB. Together 2 volumes. Both are small anthologies of poems from the Rhymers' Club, a group of London based poets founded by William Butler Yeats and Ernest Rhys.

LONDON: Elkin Mathews, at the sign of the Bodley Head, 1892; and Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894. Both are LIMITED FIRST EDITIONS of only 450 and 650 copies respectively.

From the Limitation Pages:

"Four Hundred and Fifty Copies of this Edition [The Book of the Rhymers' Club] printed, of which Three Hundred and Fifty are for Sale."

"Of this Edition [The Second Book of the Rhymers' Club] Five Hundred Copies have been printed for England of which four hundred are for Sale. One Hundred and Fifty Copies also have been printed for America."

Hardcover Books, cloth covered boards, 5x6.5 inches (12.5x16.5 cm), 94 and 136 pp respectively; paper spine title label on Book One, gilt spine titling on Book Two..

Provenance: From the library of noted book collector Albert Parsons Sachs, with his bookplate on the front pastedown of Book One.

Condition:

Book One: GOOD condition.The covers are lightly soiled and have a couple slight bumps to the edges, the spine is a little chipped at the ends and the spine title label is rubbed and chipped affecting the lettering; nonetheless these original covers remain solid and are doing their job well. Internally, there is the bookplate of Albert Parsons Sachs on the front pastedown (as noted above), the pages are age toned, otherwise tight, bright, clean and unmarked. A complete, original, nicely presentable copy.

Book Two: GOOD condition. The cover's front spine fold is split but holding well and the boards have a few rubs, otherwise the covers are solid and attractive; internally the pages are age toned as normal, the inner hinge is cracked in places but holding well, otherwise bright, clean, clear and unmarked.

First Editions of the Rhymers' Club books are Scarce.

About THE RHYMERS' CLUB (from Wikipedia):

******The Rhymers' Club, founded in 1890 by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys, was a gathering of some of London's most distinctive poets, who met at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese public house, off Fleet Street, and in the Domino Room of the Café Royal, to drink and read aloud each other's work.

The Rhymers' Club published two volumes of verse. The first, entitled The Book of the Rhymers' Club was published by Elkin Mathews in 1892. The Second Book of the Rhymers' Club appeared two years later in 1894, published by the recently merged Elkin Mathews and John Lane Publishers. They had print runs of 450 and 650 respectively. Those of the group appearing in these two volumes included: William Butler Yeats, T.W. Rolleston, John Todhunter, Richard Le Gallienne, Lionel Johnson, Arthur Cecil Hillier, Ernest Dowson, Victor Plarr, Ernest Radford, Arthur Symons, G.A. Greene, Edwin J. Ellis, and Ernest Rhys.

The Rhymers' Club stopped meeting in 1895.

Yeats later in his autobiography Yeats sought to mythologize the collective, calling it the "Tragic Generation" whose members were destined for failure and, in many cases, early death.******