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.
The essay demonstrates connections between Jungian psychology (reaffirming the existence of an archetypal world) and the traditional symbolic language used by poets such as Milton
, Shelley
, Blake
, and Yeats
.
Textual Features
Eva Gore-Booth
W. B. Yeats
claimed a central influence on EGB
's understanding of Celtic legend, though she was already thinking about it to a degree during her adolescence. In a letter to novelist Olivia Shakespear
...
Textual Features
Seamus Heaney
Setting out to enable his readers to witness the spectacle of a gifted writer becoming a definitive one, he begins by considering poetic theories of sound and meaning held by Frost
, Eliot
, and...
Textual Features
Margaret Kennedy
It was Kennedy's win in the poetry category of the competition, however, that singled out her seriousness about writing. She won on the judgment of W. B. Yeats
, who adjudicated the poetry competition.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
30
Textual Features
Dorothy Wellesley
Fire, addressed to Yeats
and headed with a quotation from Shakespeare
(Does not our life consist of the four elements?),
Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan.
1
is a poem in the same style as Matrix. Like...
Residence
Sylvia Plath
SP
found that William Butler Yeats
's former flat in Fitzroy Road, London, was available for rent, and she moved into it with her children.
Hayman, Ronald. The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath. Heinemann.
171-3
Reception
Edith Somerville
She had been a founding member of the Academy at its inception by Yeats
in 1932.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
252-3
Reception
May Laffan
For such a short piece this has been reviewed extensively; its popularity endured until the end of the nineteenth century. The Spectator said that [n]o work of fiction that we have seen for a long...
Reception
Constance, Countess Markievicz
CCM
had met W. B. Yeats
by 1894, and they remained associates until her death in 1927.
Marreco, Anne. The Rebel Countess: The Life and Times of Constance Markievicz. Chilton Books.
57-8
Yeats's reactionary attitude toward the activism of both the Gore-Booth sisters resembled his views on the work...
During the same festival, MMG
said she found Yeats
intimidating because of the perfection of his poems, but that his influence has made Seamus Heaney
's poetry and hers possible: I feel that there is...
Reception
Anna Wickham
Thanks to Untermeyer and to British poet and anthologist John Gawsworth
, by the 1930s AW
's poetry was widely anthologised, making her often as well represented as respected male poets such as Lawrence
,...
Reception
Augusta Gregory
Bernard Shaw
saw Lady Gregory as a born playwright . . . . doomed from the cradle to write for the stage, to break through every social obstacle to get to the stage, to refuse...
Reception
Katharine Tynan
At the start of her writing career, in 1885, KT
was revered as the next Catholic
woman poet to succeed Christina Rossetti
. She herself held firmly to this image even while her Parnellism and...
Reception
W. H. Auden
Auden later rejected September 1, 1939 in this collection as Yeats
ian and inflated: The unmentionable odour of death/ Offends the September night).
Auden, W. H. “September 1, 1939”. Poets.org: from the Academy of American Poets: Auden.
