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.
KT
's father, Andrew Cullen Tynan
, came from a long line of Irish farmers from Cheeverstown in Dublin and from County Wicklow. He was born from a mixed marriage: his mother was Catholic...
Family and Intimate relationships
Augusta Gregory
AG
never found out that her son was killed by friendly fire. His death inspired Yeats
's elegy In Memory of Major Robert Gregory, a reply to her request that he should write something...
Family and Intimate relationships
Florence Farr
W. B. Yeats
became interested in FF
when he saw her play the role of a shepherdess in John Todhunter
's play A Sicilian Idyll, and was transfixed by her voice.
Johnson, Josephine. Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw’s new woman. Colin Smythe, 1975.
39-40
Family and Intimate relationships
John Millington Synge
His mother, Kathleen Synge
(born Traill), was a rigid Protestant, daughter and niece of clergymen, who cast a religious gloom
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
over the house. Though he came quite early to reject her religion, and though she...
Family and Intimate relationships
Maud Gonne
MG
first met the poet William Butler Yeats
, and he fell in love with her at first sight. Her continuing role in his imaginative life remains for many people the single fact known about...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
's association with Yeats
, which lasted only the last three and a half years of his life, is treated by some commentators as a love-affair.
Tóibín, Colm. “A Djinn speaks”. London Review of Books, 20 Feb. 2003, pp. 19-24.
24
Family and Intimate relationships
Dora Sigerson
George Sigerson
, DS
's father, was a doctor specialising in nervous disorders (a new area of research), a poet, and a Gaelic scholar. He lectured on biology at the National University of Ireland
...
Education
Jennifer Johnston
JJ
began going to school at the tender age of three: she had problems with her sight and it was felt that this would teach her to recognise her letters. She attended Park House School...
Education
Julia O'Faolain
At junior school JOF
's talent for mimicry won her two medals for poetry reading: an Elizabethan poem in an English accent and from W. B. Yeats
in an Irish one.
O’Faolain, Julia. Trespassers, A Memoir. Faber and Faber, 2014.
114
Education
Bessie Head
The regime included plenty of household chores and caning as a punishment (with both of which Bessie was familiar), while the curriculum featured singing, drawing, cookery, dressmaking, nature study, and gardening as well as more...
Education
Margaret Kennedy
During her last year at Cheltenham
, MK
heard W. B. Yeats
lecture on the Irish poet and playwright J. M. Synge
.
Biographer Violet Powell
gives Synge's initialswrongly as J. B.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann, 1983.
28
Education
Emily Hickey
She demonstrated an early interest in reading. Scott
, Tennyson
, and Barrett Browning
numbered among her early favourites. Her father, however, did not allow her to read Shakespeare
, as he was repelled by...
Education
Enid Bagnold
At the age of fifteen EB
won a school poetry competition and was rewarded with a visit with W. B. Yeats
. Years later, she recalled that he advised her never to interest herself in...
Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. Sage, 1997.
7
Rich enjoyed her time at Radcliffe, though...
Dedications
Dorothy Wellesley
This selection of poems (sometimes of excerpts) comes entirely from Poems of Ten Years, except for the opening piece, Fire: An Incantation, which was written in May 1935
Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan, 1936.