# Is "The Wild Swans at Coole" by W. B. Yeats a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Wild Swans at Coole by W. B. Yeats (The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, 1917) is identified by: The Cuala first is titled in full 'The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and A Play in Verse'. Ireland precedes England, and the two editions are not the same book.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The Cuala first is titled in full 'The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and A Play in Verse'
- Published November 1917 in a limitation of 400 copies, the limitation recorded in the colophon at the rear printed in red; the Cuala charging-unicorn device appears on the leaf preceding the title
- Octavo, bound in quarter linen (grey or buff) over blue paper-covered boards, title printed in black on the upper cover, printed paper label to the spine, blue endpapers, edges untrimmed
- The boards fade readily and faded copies are catalogued variously as lavender, grey, or dark blue, so board colour alone is not a reliable point — rely on the colophon limitation
- Contents are 29 poems together with the first printing of the play At the Hawk's Well
- No number line or printing statement
- Publisher imprint reads The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | W. B. Yeats |
| Publisher | The Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum |
| Year | 1917 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | The Cuala first is titled in full 'The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and A Play in Verse' |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The Cuala first is titled in full 'The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and A Play in Verse'. Published November 1917 in a limitation of 400 copies, the limitation recorded in the colophon at the rear printed in red; the Cuala charging-unicorn device appears on the leaf preceding the title. Octavo, bound in quarter linen (grey or buff) over blue paper-covered boards, title printed in black on the upper cover, printed paper label to the spine, blue endpapers, edges untrimmed. The boards fade readily and faded copies are catalogued variously as lavender, grey, or dark blue, so board colour alone is not a reliable point — rely on the colophon limitation. Contents are 29 poems together with the first printing of the play At the Hawk's Well. No number line or printing statement.

## Is this the true first?
Ireland precedes England, and the two editions are not the same book. The Cuala Press issue (Churchtown, Dundrum, November 1917, 400 copies) is the true first. Macmillan's trade edition of March 1919 drops At the Hawk's Well and adds poems, including the first book appearances of 'In Memory of Major Robert Gregory' and 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death'; sources consulted disagree on how many poems were added (counts of eleven and seventeen both appear), so treat the number as unsettled. Both editions are collected: the Cuala for priority and for the play, the 1919 Macmillan for the first appearance of the Gregory elegies. Guard against a common and demonstrable dealer error: some catalogue descriptions list the Gregory poems in the 1917 Cuala. That is impossible. Robert Gregory was killed on 23 January 1918, after the Cuala book was published, and the elegies were written in 1918. A 1917 Cuala copy containing those poems does not exist; a description claiming one is misdescribed.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition. No later Cuala printing in this setting is recorded in the sources consulted, so a copy in this setting should be one of the 400 — verify against the colophon. The tells that matter are later-edition rather than club tells: a Macmillan imprint (1919 and after) is a different edition with different contents, not a reprint of the Cuala, and Yeats's poems were later gathered into collected volumes under other imprints that share none of these points.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Wild Swans at Coole* by W. B. Yeats a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-wild-swans-at-coole
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.