Drawing principally on two private collections, the Irish literary content of a May 30 sale to be held by Fonsie Mealy (20% buyer’s premium) in Dublin includes important works by WB Yeats, James Joyce, Patrick Cavanagh and Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan).
A copy of O’Brien’s most famous work, At Swim-Two-Birds of 1939 is pictured here. Most copies of the first edition, it is said, were destroyed during German bombing raids on London during the Blitz, and the book that Graham Greene describes on the jacket as one in a thousand and “ ...in the line of Tristram Shandy and Ulysses” is quite a rarity.
The auction house is looking for bids of €1750-2500 for this copy but a couple of others have made more.
Six years ago this Irish saleroom sold a copy inscribed to PC O’Grady for €3400, but the record was set at Sotheby’s little more than 18 months ago.
There, one of six first issue copies reserved for the author – one that he inscribed to his great friend Niall Sheridan, who had helped edit and cut his original draft – made £6500.
In his contribution to a 1973 work, Myles. ‘Portraits of Brian O’Nolan’, Sheridan recalled that he had also been entrusted with taking a copy to James Joyce in Paris: “He was alone in the flat when I called, and he said Sam Beckett had already praised At Swim-Two-Birds very highly to him and that he looked forward to reading it... [It] was, I am certain, the last novel he ever read.”
