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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
David Barnett

Yeats’ play on sale for £125,000 – thanks to message from the dead

WB Yeats’s Mosada
Mosada, written when Yeats was just 21, is on sale for £125,000. It was signed with the words ‘Mrs Zena Powell from her friend the author’. Photograph: Peter Harrington Rare Book Dealers

Billed as “one of the greatest rarities of English literature”, a signed copy of William Butler Yeats’s first play, Mosada, is on display this weekend for the first time since 1956 – and its £125,000 price tag is all thanks to a message from beyond the grave.

London dealer Peter Harrington today has the book on sale at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. It was last displayed at Trinity College Dublin 67 years ago.

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