# Is "Michael Robartes and the Dancer" by W. B. Yeats a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Michael Robartes and the Dancer by W. B. Yeats (The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, 1920) is identified by: Churchtown, Dundrum: The Cuala Press. Irish, and the census claim of Cuala Press precedence is correct: Churchtown, Dundrum is the true and only first edition; there is no competing London or New York edition of this title, and the poems were subsequently absorbed into Macmillan's collected editions, which are first thus.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Churchtown, Dundrum: The Cuala Press
- CORRECTION to the census year: the title page is dated MCMXX
- , not 1921 — the printed text reads "THE CUALA PRESS / CHURCHTOWN / DUNDRUM / MCMXX" — and the colophon records the printing as finished on All Souls' Day 1920, while Wade records actual publication in February 1921
- Catalogues therefore split between 1920 and 1921 for one and the same book; there is only one Cuala printing, so the discrepancy is a cataloguing artefact, not two editions
- Limited to 400 copies, hand-printed by the poet's sister Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, the text elegantly printed in red and black
- Bound in blue paper boards backed in buff half-linen, all edges untrimmed; issued in a plain tan dust jacket
- Publisher imprint reads The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | W. B. Yeats |
| Publisher | The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum |
| Year | 1920 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | Churchtown, Dundrum: The Cuala Press |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Churchtown, Dundrum: The Cuala Press. CORRECTION to the census year: the title page is dated MCMXX (1920), not 1921 — the printed text reads "THE CUALA PRESS / CHURCHTOWN / DUNDRUM / MCMXX" — and the colophon records the printing as finished on All Souls' Day 1920, while Wade records actual publication in February 1921. Catalogues therefore split between 1920 and 1921 for one and the same book; there is only one Cuala printing, so the discrepancy is a cataloguing artefact, not two editions. Limited to 400 copies, hand-printed by the poet's sister Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, the text elegantly printed in red and black. Bound in blue paper boards backed in buff half-linen, all edges untrimmed; issued in a plain tan dust jacket. Because the Cuala Press did not reprint, a copy answering to these points is the first and only Cuala edition.

## Is this the true first?
Irish, and the census claim of Cuala Press precedence is correct: Churchtown, Dundrum is the true and only first edition; there is no competing London or New York edition of this title, and the poems were subsequently absorbed into Macmillan's collected editions, which are first thus. CORRECTION to the census contents note: this is the first book appearance of "The Second Coming" (first printed in The Dial, November 1920) and of "A Prayer for My Daughter", but it is NOT the first printing of "Easter, 1916" — that poem was privately printed as a separate pamphlet by Clement Shorter in an edition of 25 copies (sources differ between late 1916 and early 1917) and then appeared in The New Statesman on 23 October 1920, both preceding the Cuala volume. Michael Robartes and the Dancer is the first appearance of "Easter, 1916" in a Yeats collection, and the 1916/17 Shorter text differs from the 1920/21 text.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition; Cuala hand-press books were not reprinted by the press. The reprint traps are Macmillan's collected editions, the modern Cornell "Manuscript Materials" scholarly volume, and Wikisource/Project Gutenberg digital texts — none of which are editions of issue.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Michael Robartes and the Dancer* by W. B. Yeats a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/michael-robartes-and-the-dancer
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.