First collected edition of Yeats's work, signed by Yeats on the half-title of volume four (very scarce thus), one of the 250 first issue sets in the deluxe quarter vellum binding, with the publisher's imprint on the spines and title pages, from a total edition of 1,060 sets printed at the Shakespeare Head Press. The signature to the half title of volume four reads "W. B. Yeats, Nov 16 1916" - this volume also bears the illustrated bookplate of Lady Violet Leconfield (1892-1952), who married Charles Henry, 3rd Baron Leconfield (1872-1952) in 1911. They lived at Petworth House (shown on her illustrated bookplate), one of England's greatest aristocratic houses, was friend to numerous authors including Alice Meynell, and even co-wrote a book of poems, "A Petworth Posie" (1918) with Rudyard Kipling. Yeats may have been introduced to Lady Leconfield through Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who was born at Petworth, or through Leconfield's lifelong friend "Ettie" Lady Besborough, who had been attracting Yeats as a party guest since 1911. As a production, this collected edition is regarded as a marvellous piece of publishing (Yeats himself was proud of it, remarking, "I think nobody of our time has had so fine an edition - I believe it will greatly strengthen my position"), collecting, with the poet's own selection and arrangement, a substantially complete corpus (poems, plays and prose) of his first canon of work, before the finding of his later voice.
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