Celtic Wonder Tales. Re-told by Ella Young. Illustrated and Decorations by Maud Gonne. Dublin: Maunsel, 1910. First Edition. Pp [viii], 201 Pp vii, 202. Dark blue cloth boards, Celtic lettering & design to upper cover in black, title in gilt to spine. Light shelf-wear & scuffing to boards, contents pages in nice bright condition.

Attractively illustrated with four tipped-in illustrations in colour, with many decorative head and tail-pieces throughout by Maud Gonne.

Ella Young (1867-1956) was born in Fenagh, County Antrim, one of several daughters in the Protestant Young family. As a student at the Royal University, she studied economy, history and law, and developed an interest in Irish mythology and folklore. This interest in all things Irish rather naturally led her to support the Republican cause, and shortly after she began writing for Sinn Féin, she also began gun-running for the Irish Republican Army. During the Rising (in her own words), ‘a thing that counted greatly in my life’, she was blacklisted and fled to Connemara. She returned to Dublin in 1919, remaining there until leaving to lecture in the United States in 1925. She remained in America and settled in California to teach at the University of California at Berkeley, where she continued her folklore studies, shifting her focus to Mexican and Native American legends.

She became good friends with Maud Gonne (Irish republican revolutionary, a suffragette and an actress) who also illustrated Young’s collection of poems ‘The Rose of Heaven’ (1920).