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.
It had already been published in Seven Short Plays.
Saddlemyer, Ann, and Augusta Gregory. “Foreword and History of First Productions”. The Tragedies and Tragic Comedies of Lady Gregory, Colin Smythe, p. v - xiii.
xi
Critic Ann Saddlemyer
has argued that this play unmistakably belong[s] to Lady Gregory's vision of the world.
Saddlemyer, Ann. In Defence of Lady Gregory, Playwright. Dufour Editions.
75
She attributes the stranger's song and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Augusta Gregory
Robert married Margaret Graham Parry
, a fellow art student, in 1907. They had three children, one of whom, Anne with her golden hair, was the subject of a poem by Yeats
.
Stevenson, Mary Lou Kohfeldt. Lady Gregory: The Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance. Atheneum.
195, 198, 206, 223, 239, 297
Textual Production
Augusta Gregory
The volume opened with Yeats
's poem Coole Park, dated 7 September 1929. Many years after AG
's death, a longer version of this historical work, including previously unpublished chapters, was completed from the...
Friends, Associates
Augusta Gregory
That same summer Yeats
made an extended stay at AG
's estate. Their friendship flourished, and for twenty years he spent the summers there under her motherly care. Theirs was an extremely close, productive, and...
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...
politics
Augusta Gregory
AG
supported the Irish cause more overtly later in life, though her ambivalence toward constitutional politics did not disappear entirely. During the time of The Terror (1920-21), AG
published some politically charged accounts of atrocities...
Author summary
Eva Gore-Booth
In addition to her intense suffrage and labour activism, EGB
wrote poetry, periodical essays, political pamphlets, religious criticism, plays, and an autobiograpical sketch. Her work was admired by her contemporaries Katharine Tynan
, Æ (...
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...
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
...
Fictionalization
Eva Gore-Booth
W. B. Yeats
(who first met the Gore-Booth family in about 1894, and associated with Eva and her sister Constance Markievicz
for the rest of their lives)
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. Pandora.
37
wrote In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and...
Friends, Associates
Eva Gore-Booth
EGB
was acquainted with W. B. Yeats
, who claimed a formative influence on her writing.
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. Pandora.
37
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...
Textual Production
Maud Gonne
The United Irishman published the text of MG
's own play, Dawn, A Play in One Act and Three Tableaux, about the Great Famine of the 1840s, two years after she appeared in the...
Textual Production
Maud Gonne
This is the date of the earliest remaining letter of the correspondence between MG
and W. B. Yeats
, which they maintained until his death on 28 January 1939.
Gonne, Maud, and W. B. Yeats. The Gonne–Yeats Letters 1893–1938. Editors White, Anna MacBride and A. Norman Jeffares, Hutchinson.
49, 453
Textual Production
Maud Gonne
Gonne
kept safe the letter that Yeats
wrote her on this date, noting it as the last letter from W. B. Y..
Gonne, Maud, and W. B. Yeats. The Gonne–Yeats Letters 1893–1938. Editors White, Anna MacBride and A. Norman Jeffares, Hutchinson.
