Stories of Red Hanrahan and The Secret Rose

1927

Brasch PR5904 S76 1927

London: Macmillan

In 1935, Brasch visited Ireland, travelling to places such as Dublin, Gort, Coole, and Sligo. Reading material he carried with him included Yeats’s Collected Poems. The influence was profound: ‘Here was the work of a living poet which sounded like sea surge in my ears and haunted me no less than that of any of the great dead.’ In 1939, Yeats died as did Brasch’s sister Lesley. He wrote gloomily: ‘It was the worst time I had ever known.’ Yeats was always a constant. In 1927, he bought this copy of Yeats’s Red Hanrahan, a reprint from the original in 1897. Reading it, he was able to soak up Irish history and culture told in Yeats’s own inimitable style.