A pair of WB Yeats’ iconic optical glasses have been sold for €10,000 in Kilkenny.

The spectacles were put up for auction as part of a collection of over 200 items belonging to the Yeats family.

The €10,000 figure was 20 times the guide price set down by Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers at their salesroom in Castlecomer.

The auctioneers claimed the collection, which included paintings, letters and personal artefacts from the Yeats family, would be “the last significant tranche of items” from the family to ever go to auction.

Entitled, ‘The Yeats Family Collection - The Final Chapter’ the batch included one of only two known signed and compiled sketchbooks from Yeats’ time at art college in Dublin and a monogrammed briefcase which he later gifted to his son Michael.

The auction also included paintings and sketches by W.B’s father John Butler Yeats and his brother Jack B. Yeats.

It comes after a desk used by Yeats sold for £150,000 (€167,000) to a private Irish buyer at an auction in October.

Ahead of that auction, the National Library of Ireland purchased more than 500 letters between Yeats and his wife Georgie Hyde-Lees for €725,000.