The Cuala Press was set up in 1904 by Elizabeth Yeats and her brother William Butler Yeats. Elizabeth had previously run the Dun Emer Press for two years and had published work by her brother from that imprint. It was intended that the press would produce work by writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival. They ended up publishing over 70 titles in total, including 48 by William Butler Yeats. The press closed in 1946.

Elizabeth Yeats had started her career working with William Morris in London. The Cuala was unusual in that it was the only Arts and Crafts press to be run and staffed by women and the only one that published new work rather than established classics. In addition to Yeats, Cuala published works by Ezra Pound, Jack B. Yeats, Robin Flower, Elizabeth Bowen, Oliver St John Gogarty, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Lionel Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, John Masefield, Frank O'Connor, John Millington Synge, John Butler Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore and others.

After Elizabeth Yeats died in 1940, the work of the press was carried on by two of her long-time assistants, Esther Ryan and Marie Gill. The final Cuala title was Stranger in Aran by Elizabeth Rivers, which was published on July 31, 1946.

In 1969 the press was taken up by WB Yeats' children, Michael and Anne Yeats, with Liam Miller. Some titles were run in the 1970s, and valuable archives are still held by the press.

References

• Lewis, Gifford. The Yeats sisters and the Cuala. (Irish Academic Press, 1994). ISBN 0-7165-2525-9
• Wiliam Butler Yeats at the Princess Grace Irish Library
• Elizabeth Yeats at the Princess Grace Irish Library
• Elizabeth Yeats at Unseen Hands: Women Printers, Binders and Book Designers

Further reading

• William M. Murphy. 'Dun Emer, 1902–1908'; 'William Butler Yeats and the Weird Sisters'; 'Cuala: the Partnership 1908–1923'; 'Cuala: the Separation, 1924–1940': in Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives. Syracuse University Press, 1995; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995.

External links

• Cuala Press Broadside Collection, illustrated by Jack B. Yeats is located at the Special Collections/Digital Library in Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University.