Yeats - Biographical notes

W.B Yeats - Biographical notes

(1865-1939)

eldest son of J.B. Yeats and brother of Jack Yeats, both celebrated painters
born in Dublin, educated at the Godolphin School, Hammersmith and the High School Dublin
studied at the School of Art in Dublin for 3 years where, with a fellow student George Russell (AE), he developed an interest in mystic religion and the supernatural
at 21 he abandoned art as a profession in favour of literature, writing John Sherman and Dhoya (1891) and editing The Poems of William Blake (1893), The Works of William Blake (with F.J. Ellis, 3 vols., 1893) and Poems of Spenser (1906)
a nationalist, he helped to found an Irish Literary Society in London in 1891 and another in Dublin in 1892
helped to create an Irish National Theatre, with Lady Gregory and others, this was partially realized in 1899 when his play The Countess Cathleen (1892) was produced in Dublin. The English actors gave way in 1902 to an Irish amateur company which produced Yeats' Cathleen Ni Houlihan
the Irish National Theatre Company was thereafter created and, with the help of Miss A.E. Horniman, acquired the Abbey Theatre as its permanent home
Yeats' early study of Irish folklore and legends resulted in his work on Fairy tales - Fairy and Folk Tales of Irish Peasantry (1888), The Celtic Twilight (1893), and The Secret Rose (1897)
Irish traditional and nationalist themes and the poet's unrequited love for Maud Gonne provided much of the subject matter for his early volumes of poetry - The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1899), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), The Shadowy Waters (1900), and such of his later plays as On Baile's Strand (1904) and Deidre (1907)
his mounting disillusionment with Irish Politics came to a head in 1912 and 1913 with the controversy over the Lane Bequest of French Impressionist Paintings (Lane bequested his collection to Dublin for a municipal Art Gallery, but the bequest was contested by the National Gallery in London - after much squabbling, the two galleries agreed to share the collection)
the Easter Rising of 1916, however, restored his faith in the heroic character of his countrymen, It also reaffirmed his abhorrence of violence
1917 - he married Georgie Hyde-Lees, who on their honeymoon attempted automatic writing - an event that exercised a profound effect on Yeats' life and work
His wife's "communications" ultimately provided him with the system of symbolism described in A Vision (1925) and which forms the underpinning of many of the poems in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Seven Poems and a Fragment (1922), The Cant and the Moon and Certain Poems (1924), October Blast (1927), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929), Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932), Wheels and Butterflies (1934), The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934), A Full Moon in March (1935), New Poems (1938), and Last Poems and Two Plays (1939)

LI> Yeats served as a Senator of the Irish Free State from 1922-1928
Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923
in 1939 he died in the South of France, where he was buried due to World War II
in 1948 his body was brought back to Ireland and interred at Drumcliff in Sligo, where much of his childhood had been spent.

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