W. B. Yeats

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
After this VW saw Ottoline Morrell many times at Garsington and at Ottoline's other salons, where guests included W. B. Yeats , Aldous Huxley , Mark Gertler , and Dorothy Brett , among many others...
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 ,...
Intertextuality and Influence Eudora Welty
This is one of her best-known volumes of stories, in part perhaps because of its involvement with gender issues, with such topics as early sexual development, rigidly demarcated gender roles, misogyny, sexual violence, defiance of...
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...
Textual Production Dorothy Wellesley
On this date he received by post a ballad by her, a reverie upon the grave of a trio of lovers, possibly dating from or inspired by his stay at Penns the previous month. This...
Reception Dorothy Wellesley
W. B. Yeats , then aged seventy, discovered DW 's writing in 1935 when he was ill in bed and was at work on The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He was feeling disillusioned...
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.
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.
v, 11
and which later...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Dorothy Wellesley
The basic organization of Deserted House: Poem Sequence goes forward unaltered from its form as a separate volume, but Horses strangely becomes the last item in Trilogy II: Wine, and both Fire and Matrix...
Friends, Associates Dorothy Wellesley
DW first met W. B. Yeats , to her great excitement, when he invited himself to stay for a night at Penns in the Rocks; they became intimate friends.
Yeats, W. B. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley. Editor Wellesley, Dorothy, Oxford University Press.
2
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
162-3
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...
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...
Travel Dorothy Wellesley
DW rented the villa La Bastide near Beaulieu sur Mer in the south of France; Yeats was staying nearby with his wife, apparently restored to health after serious illness.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
165
Literary responses Dorothy Wellesley
Yeats 's introduction praised her for uniting a modern subject and vocabulary with traditional richness.
Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, p. vii - xv.
x
As well as Horses, he particularly praised Matrix.
Textual Production Dorothy Wellesley
W. B. Yeats chose and edited for the publisher Macmillan a volume of Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, in which he sought to establish her reputation.
Dated from the Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.
Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan.
vii

Timeline

1890: The year following Irish nationalist Ellen...

Women writers item

1890

The year following Irish nationalist Ellen O'Leary 's death from breast cancer on 15 October 1889, her Lays of Country, Home and Friends (many of them political) were collected and published.

December 1891: William Butler Yeats established (in London)...

Writing climate item

December 1891

William Butler Yeats established (in London) the Irish Literary Society ; the National Literary Society at Dublin followed the next year.

By April 1894: English theatre patron Annie Horniman funded...

Writing climate item

By April 1894

English theatre patron Annie Horniman funded a repertory season at the Avenue Theatre (later the Avenue Playhouse), London which concentrated on the new drama.

By earlier 1903: Elizabeth and Lily (or Susan Mary) Yeats...

Writing climate item

By earlier 1903

Elizabeth and Lily (or Susan Mary) Yeats established the Dun Emer Press in association with Evelyn Gleeson , manager of Dun Emer Industries in Dundrum, near Dublin.
Some sources suggest that the press...

By earlier 1903: Elizabeth and Lily (or Susan Mary) Yeats...

Writing climate item

By earlier 1903

Elizabeth and Lily (or Susan Mary) Yeats established the Dun Emer Press in association with Evelyn Gleeson , manager of Dun Emer Industries in Dundrum, near Dublin.
Some sources suggest that the press...

1908: The Cuala Press of Dublin published its first...

Writing climate item

1908

The Cuala Press of Dublin published its first two titles; it was the successor to the Dun Emer Press , founded by Elizabeth and Lily Yeats , sisters of the poet .

3 August 1916: In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Irish...

National or international item

3 August 1916

In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Irish nationalist Roger Casement , formerly Sir Roger, was executed for treason at Pentonville Prison in London for attempting to smuggle a shipment of German arms to Ireland.

8 February 1932: Count Geoffrey Wladislas Vaile Potocki of...

Writing climate item

8 February 1932

Count Geoffrey Wladislas Vaile Potocki of Montalk went to trial (and was later convicted) for obscene libel for having tried to get printed for private circulation five short poems.

1937: Margot Ruddock published The Lemon Tree,...

Women writers item

1937

Margot Ruddock published The Lemon Tree, a collection of her poetry edited by W. B. Yeats .

By June 1958: The Nigerian Chinua Achebe published his...

Writing climate item

By June 1958

The Nigerian Chinua Achebe published his first and still most famous novel, Things Fall Apart (titled from W. B. Yeats ).

By July 1964: Canadian writer Jane Rule issued in Canada...

Writing climate item

By July 1964

Canadian writer Jane Rule issued in Canada and England her best-known novel, Desert of the Heart, whose title alludes to W. H. Auden 's poem on the death of Yeats .

1970: Roger McHugh edited a collection of letters...

Women writers item

1970

Roger McHugh edited a collection of letters between W. B. Yeats and Margot Ruddock entitled Ah, Sweet Dancer.

Texts

Yeats, W. B. A Vision. Privately printed for subscribers only by T. Werner Laurie, 1925.
Yeats, W. B. A Vision. Macmillan, 1962.
Yeats, W. B. “Foreword”. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, edited by Dorothy Wellesley, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. v.
Yeats, W. B. Four Plays for Dancers. Macmillan Co., 1921.
Yeats, W. B. In the Seven Woods. Dun Emer Press, 1903.
Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, 1936, p. vii - xv.
Raine, Kathleen, and W. B. Yeats. “Introduction”. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, edited by Dorothy Wellesley and Dorothy Wellesley, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. ix - xiii.
Yeats, W. B. Last Poems and Two Plays. Cuala Press, 1939.
Yeats, W. B. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley. Editor Wellesley, Dorothy, Oxford University Press, 1940.
Yeats, W. B. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley. Editor Wellesley, Dorothy, Oxford University Press, 1964.
Yeats, W. B. Letters to Katharine Tynan. Editor McHugh, Roger, Clonmore and Reynolds, 1953.
Yeats, W. B. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Cuala Press, 1920.
Yeats, W. B. On Baile’s Strand. Maunsel and Co., 1905.
Tynan, Katharine et al., editors. Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland. M. H. Gill and Son, 1888.
Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan, 1936.
Yeats, W. B. The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Shakespeare Head Press; Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Yeats, W. B. The Countess Cathleen. T. F. Unwin, 1899.
Yeats, W. B. The Countess Kathleen. T. Fisher Unwin, 1892.
Gonne, Maud, and W. B. Yeats. The Gonne–Yeats Letters 1893–1938. Editors White, Anna MacBride and A. Norman Jeffares, Hutchinson, 1992.
Yeats, W. B. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. Oxford University Press, 1936.
Yeats, W. B. The Tower. Macmillan, 1928.
Yeats, W. B., and Augusta Gregory. The Unicorn from the Stars, and Other Plays. Macmillan, 1908.
Yeats, W. B. The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems. Paul Trench, 1889.
Yeats, W. B. The Wild Swans at Coole. Cuala Press, 1917.
Yeats, W. B. The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Macmillan and Co Ltd., 1933.