Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
W. B. Yeats
-
Standard Name: Yeats, W. B.
Used Form: William Butler Yeats
Used Form: Willie Yeats
WBY
, who began publishing well before the end of the nineteenth century, is regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century poets in English, and one of the most international of Irish writers. He was early involved in the Irish Literary Revival, and wrote early, highly romantic lyrics on Celtic and fairy themes. Later he made poetry out of the search for a poetic language. Some of his later work is affected by his interest in the occult.
Yeats
said, I have read in a paper called The Egoist certain chapters of a new novel, a disguised autobiography, which increases my conviction that he is the most remarkable new talent in Ireland today...
Literary responses
Dorothy Wellesley
Yeats
admired this volume for its explorations of the picturesque, for its love . . . for undisturbed Nature, a hatred for the abstract, the mechanical, the invented, and for an intensity which he saw...
Literary responses
Wendy Cope
Reviewer Andrew O'Hagan
, however, applies a withering pen to WC
in a tirade about a general style of anthology which is, he says, frivolous or aimed at the lifestyle or selfhelp markets. His complaint...
Archer, William. Poets of the Younger Generation. John Lane, Bodley Head.
vii-viii
Her diction is pure, he...
Literary responses
Dorothy Wellesley
During this correspondence Yeats
wrote to her expressing the highest opinion of her work, even when he was most earnestly bent on changing it.
Literary responses
Eva Gore-Booth
The volume was well-received by EGB
's contemporaries. W. B. Yeats
wrote to her: I think it is full of poetic feeling and has great promise. . . . Weariness is really most imaginative and...
Literary responses
Edith Sitwell
This book made Yeats
liken ES
to Swift
for her passion ennobled by intensity, by endurance, by wisdom.
Sitwell, Edith. Taken Care Of: An Autobiography. Hutchinson.
106
Her Times obituary called these poems Sitwell's The Waste Land, suggesting that despite her still...
Literary responses
Augusta Gregory
The collection was widely admired when it first appeared in print. Yeats
praised it in his preface as the best book that has come out of Ireland in my time
McDiarmid, Lucy et al. “Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography”. Selected Writings, Penguin, pp. xi - xliv, 525.
xxviii
and used it as...
Literary responses
Dorothy Wellesley
Yeats
found and valued in DW
's work both descriptive genius
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
and passionate precision.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Sackville-West
's considered judgement was that Wellesley was undisciplined, and that the philosophic freight which Yeats admired in her work...
Literary responses
Teresa Deevy
The Belfast News-Letter reviewed this volume in February next year along with work by O'Casey
, Yeats
, and Lennox Robinson
. The reviewer was impressed by different qualities in all of these, but judged...
Literary responses
Augusta Gregory
W. B. Yeats
's introduction, 1904, said the stories were so full of power, and set in a world so fluctuating and dreamlike, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires....
Literary responses
Edna O'Brien
Jonathan Yardley
, reviewing for the Washington Post, stressed O'Brien's brilliance and her nationality. If what you're looking for is a map of Ireland, the fiction of Edna O'Brien will do just fine. She...
Literary responses
Katharine Tynan
Yeats
reviewed this book for the Gael, the Irish Fireside Review, and Truth. He declared that in the finding [of] her nationality she has found also herself, and written many pages of...
Occupation
Florence Farr
Annie Horniman
, whom FF
met through the Order of the Golden Dawn
, agreed to back the season financially. Farr succeeded in persuading Yeats
to write a one-act play for her season, and enlisted...
Occupation
Augusta Gregory
The first idea for the Irish Literary Theatre developed as AG
, W. B. Yeats
, and Edward Martyn
were discussing the latter's play Maeve, and asked themselves why it could not be staged...