Description
Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1926. First edition in first state binding, 8vo, dust-jacket, inscribed by the author "To / Estella Starkey, with every good / wish, / from / Hugh M'Diarmid / 13.8.28", the original cloth with ruled border in blind, gilt lettering above and below a gilt Celtic vignette, dust-jacket with spine and edges somewhat discoloured, a few small chips and slight splitting along dust-jacket joints
Footnote
Provenance: Inscribed by Hugh MacDiarmid to "Estella Starkey" (née Estella Francis Solomons, 1882-1968), one of the leading Irish artists of her generation and wife of Irish poet and editor, Seamus O'Sullivan (née James Sullivan Starkey, 1879-1958); subsequently inscribed by the book's dedicatee, Scottish composer Francis George Scott, in September 1933 during a trip to Ireland. MacDiarmid stated that he could not have completed the work without Scott's help. Scott also took an important part in the Scottish Literary Renaissance.
Note: A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is generally regarded as MacDiarmid's most famous and influential work: the Scottish Ulysses? The present author and dedicatee inscribed copy with the rare dust-jacket stands, also, as a witness to the attempts at cooperation within the resurgent Celtic world. This makes it an important copy of the most important work from one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Renaissance: inscribed to a Jewish female artist and Irish nationalist, whose life was lived at the very centre of the vibrant Irish literary world of the first part of the 20th century.
MacDiarmid attended the August 1928 Tailteann Games, in Dublin, at the invitation of Oliver Gogarty (with whom he stayed) and, during his visit, he met many of the Irish literary giants of the time, including Estella's husband, Seamus O'Sullivan. Seamus was a difficult and abrasive friend to most of the leading literary figures in Dublin, including W.B. Yeats, James Stephens and George William Russell 'AE'. The O'Sullivans' "at homes" on Sunday afternoons were a central feature of Dublin literary life, as were Russel's Sunday evenings and Yeats's Monday evenings. It is a possibility (if not a probability) that it was at one of these gatherings that MacDiarmid inscribed the present work.
See MacDiarmid's The Company I've Kept, p.192, for a reference to his friendship with Estella Solomons.