James Joyce
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Samhain, October 1902
Dublin, Sealy, Bryers & Walker; London, T. Fisher Unwin
With pencil drawings of James Joyce by John Butler Yeats
In October 1902, George Russell (“AE”) wrote to Yeats, “The spectre of the new generation has appeared. His name is Joyce. I have suffered from him and I would like you to suffer.” Yeats agreed to meet Joyce, and AE’s warning proved accurate. As he left, Joyce, aged 22, imperiously declared that Yeats, aged 37, was “too old” to be helped. Joyce firmly rejected any invitations to become part of the literary movement, and left Ireland for Paris in 1904, albeit with money from Gregory—who had also helped his career in other ways—in his pocket. These drawings by Yeats’s father, on the first page of the Samhain publication of Gregory’s “The Lost Saint,” are signed “Jas. A Joyce” by the sitter.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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