Where to get copies of A Vision

This page started out as a guide to buying a copy of A Vision over the Internet, and it still tries to do that: see the sources in the second half of the page.

In the process, though, I have realised two problems, which need addressing first:

• (1) that there are now no standard trade paperback editions in print; and
• (2) that publishers and/or booksellers get very confused about the two editions of A Vision (the 1925 version and the 1937 version).

• (1) Presumably the imminent publication of both the 1925 and the 1937 versions in the Collected Edition of the Works has led Macmillan, Scribner and other publishers into letting the work lapse from their lists. Volume XIII of the Collected Edition, A Vision A (1925), is due out on 1 April 2008, with a list price of $60 – though see details below. This edition has been edited by Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul and promises to be excellent, but it is still rather expensive, unless it gets issued in paperback at some stage.

  With respect to the more authoritative edition, A Vision B (1937), until Volume XIV of the Collected Edition comes out, it is only available new in one version, which is a Kessinger reprint. This sometimes proclaims itself as ‘A Vision (1925)’, but is actually a facsimile of the 1937 edition, A Vision B (and in fact the corrected edition of 1962). It no longer appears on Kessinger’s own list, but other merchants list it.

• (2) This state of affairs means that second-hand copies are all the more important. If you are dealing with an independent bookseller then they will normally have looked at the copy they have and give a good or adequate description. This does not seem to be the case for the bigger booksellers, who seem to use a stock description that is borrowed from elsewhere or taken from a database and may or may not match the actual edition they have.
  Just to recap about the two versions: A Vision A was published in 1925, and the text was substantially revised before the second ‘edition’ of the work came out in 1937, A Vision B.
  Unfortunately, booksellers, publishers or at least their cataloguers do not always seem to be aware of the difference, and treat these two versions as conventional first and second editions. They therefore give 1925 as the original publication date, and treat the 1937 version and its corrected states as just subsequent editions of the same work.
  The following description is now widespread, with identical punctuation, no doubt having been promiscuously cut and pasted: ‘1925. Contents: a packet for Ezra Pound; stories of Michael Robartes and his friends: an extract from a record made by his pupils; phases of moon; great wheel; completed symbol; soul in judgment; great year of ancients; dove or swan; allsoul's night, an epilogue. With many figures and illustrations....’. This book does not exist: either the date is wrong or the contents are wrong. If the contents are accurate, they apply to the 1937 edition only, and if the date is accurate the contents should be something like: ‘Dedication (to Vestigia); Introduction (by Owen Aherne); What the Caliph Partly Learned; What the Caliph Refused to Learn; Dove or Swan; The Gates of Pluto’.
  Since it is far easier to make a mistake over the date than the contents, it would be reasonable to think that this label applies to the 1937 version really, but it is also stuck on editions which are definitely the 1925 version, such as the Harper and Hood Critical Edition. This is all very unfortunate and potentially confusing.

  The number of pages should help to distinguish the two, but sadly this is not an accurate guide either.

  • A Vision A should have xxiii + 256 pages, and since a couple of the pictures are on unnumbered pages this should give 280 pages more or less.
  • The Critical Edition of 'A Vision' (1925) has the same 280 plus another 50 pages of introduction (numbered in Roman numerals, ‘L’ or ‘l’) and 108 pages of notes, so 438 pages plus a few blanks.
  • A Vision B is numbered consecutively to page 305, with again a few more blank or title pages.
  Look on various web-pages, though, and you will see a 108-page edition of the Critical Edition (someone checked the number on the last page and just put that down) and the Kessinger edition is said to have 320 pages, which is the same total as the old Scribner paperback version of A Vision B but none of the original versions?

  With respect to the currently available Kessinger edition: it is the only version available ‘new’, apparently a facsimile, printed on demand, but the details are annoyingly mixed-up. The cover and title page state that it is the 1925 edition, but it is in fact the 1937 edition A Vision B — the publisher’s own site advertises the contents of the 1937 edition and I am grateful to Matthew DeForrest for confirming the details of the book.

  Buying books over the internet works because a book is subject to a limited number of variables, and these can all be described fairly accurately. If you give the date, place, publisher, edition you have defined the book, and the state of the book's condition falls within a limited range — even more so if the book is new. The description of the contents should give a sense of the actual book and clarify further variables. But this does not work if the information is unreliable, or obviously mixed up. With this cut-and-pasted description of A Vision all editions of the book become exactly the same and, since at least one part of it must be wrong, it does not inspire trust.

I find the situation with the ‘new’ copies at the time of writing (Winter 2008) slightly more encouraging that it was a few years ago — then availability was limited to the Kessinger imprint. Now, with the Scribner Collected Edition of A Vision A (1925) due to be published in April 2008, at least both versions will be available, since the Kessinger book is the 1937 version (albeit misleadingly labeled) and the Scribner is the 1925 version (albeit rather pricey).

Certainly, however, neither of these is necessarily ideal for curious readers and students who are just interested in the work, for whom a cheapish reliable edition is the ideal thing. For them the second-hand market will remain important, but the stock of these books is relatively limited, and with the cheaper copies the postage will quite probably cost as much as the book itself. Generally, if the edition is not stated it is most likely to be A Vision B, which until now has been by far the most readily available. However, it is worth trying to make sure which edition you are getting, and if you are in doubt (and you fairly confident that you will be able to deal with a human being who will actually look at the book, rather than trotting off a description from the database/web-site), e-mail and ask if the edition starts with "A Packet for Ezra Pound", in which case it will be A Vision B. If it starts with the "Dedication" entitled "To Vestigia", it is A Vision A.

If you are going to read A Vision for the first time, it is probably better to start with A Vision B (1937), which means getting the Kessinger reprint, using a library or finding a second-hand copy.
There is nothing wrong with starting with A Vision A (1925). It is arguably the more readily readable of the two versions, and it is also arguable that it represents Yeats’s thought at the period when he was writing much of the poetry that derives from the System. Moreover, large sections are the same in both editions, but Yeats’s analysis of the after-life changed significantly, some of the more technical details were overhauled almost completely and A Vision A does not deal with the Principles in any depth. If you start with A Vision A, you have to bear in mind that certain elements of your understanding may have to be revised later on. Some of the more technical sections also assume a familiarity with astrology and astrological symbols that many readers may find off-putting or confusing.

Details of the Collected Edition of A Vision A (1925) are available at: Scribner's/Simon and Schuster's page – no discounts available.
Amazon's page available at $37.80 — and Amazon.co.uk available at £27.80 (information correct February 15 2008). Thanks to Ruud Bouthoorn for letting me know about this.

The following links are designed to take you straight to the relevant results (in a new window), but this is not possible or feasible with some sites, because of the set-up, so some go to a general list of Yeats’s works. Some specifications may also change with time, so the link at the end takes you to the site’s front or home page, to start the search yourself. This may also be more convenient if you want to narrow geographical or currency options from the start.

Second-hand, for the widest range

As an incorrigible buyer of second-hand books myself, I can definitely recommend AbeBooks, which is a network of mainly independent, small shops and stores, though the bigger concerns are also edging in now.

Comparative meta-search

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Also useful are the following:

Publishers

Mainly second hand

The usual suspects

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Page revised: 27/01/06
With thanks to Matthew DeForrest for information about the Kessinger reprint.