It is harsh exercise to put into cold print and to bare all the faults of such subjective things as letters written ‘in great haste’ in the middle of a busy active life, and it requires the kindness and tolerance of the reader. Nuances in the handwriting, or insertion of omitted words and afterthoughts, or positioning of postscripts, are all lost in printing; while irregularities in spelling, punctuation, abbreviations and repetitious phrases are exaggerated. The few of Yeat’s letters to Maud Gonne that have survived were scattered through old bundles of correspondence. The only two kept particularly safe were together in an envelope, one marked ‘last letter from W. B. Y.’ which was written on 16 June 1938 from Steyning, Sussex, and the other a letter concerning the death of William Sharp which he had asked her to keep safely and which she must have put in a separate place, and so it survived. The letters he received from her before her marriage of 10 and 24 February 1903, had been very crumpled as if carried around in his pocket and reread many times, then smoothed out to be put away with the others.

Introduction by: Anna Macbride White, A. Norman Jeffares