Pilgrimage
by Althea Gyles
introduced by Daniel Corrick
Althea Gyles (1867–1949) was an Irish poet, artist and mystic whose illustrations adorned books by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson. She was a vivid presence in the occult and art worlds of fin-de-siècle Britain, a friend and acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats and the lover of the “decadent” publisher Leonard Smithers. She was regarded by many, in the words of Yeats, as “one of the most important of the little group of Irish poets” who “seek to express” deep emotion in the form of “myths and symbols”.
Pilgrimage, her only novel, was never published in her lifetime and is here presented for the first time with an introduction by Daniel Corrick. The novel, likely completed around 1919, is an odd modernist work dealing with reincarnation. Semi-autobiographical in nature, it is an important addition to the oeuvre of this highly interesting artist.
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Hardcover Edition - limited to 180 copies
212 pages. Thread-stitched and lithographically printed on a fine 140 g/m Italian Sahara paper with vermilion 140 g/m endpapers. The cover is a high quality Italian canvas with stamping on the front and spine in red.
ISBN: 9781645251927
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Press, reviews, endorsements
Journal Article about Althea Gyles’ works: The aesthetic conception in the artistic and literary work of Althea Gyles (1868–1949) from Vol 13 of Cogent Arts & Humanities
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About the Author
Althea Gyles (1867–1949) was an Irish poet, artist and mystic, and a vivid presence in the occult and art worlds of fin-de-siècle Britain, though her work has long remained in the margins. An friend and acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats and the lover of the “decadent” publisher Leonard Smithers, she was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn before proceeding down other paths.
