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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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 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
qtd. in
McDiarmid, Lucy et al. “Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography”. Selected Writings, Penguin, 1995, pp. xi - xliv, 525.
xxviii
and used it as...
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...
Literary responses Michael Field
Writing in 1892, William Butler Yeats said that Callirrhoë possessed imagination and fancy in plenty
Yeats, W. B. Uncollected Prose by W.B. Yeats. Editors Frayne, John P. and Colton Johnson, Columbia University Press, 1970–1976, 2 vols.
227
—setting itself apart from some of MF 's later publications, which he considered to be much less successful.
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 Dorothy Wellesley
Yeats found and valued in DW 's work both descriptive genius
qtd. in
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, 1990.
and passionate precision.
qtd. in
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 Seamus Heaney
Motion mentions the famous comparison of Heaney with Yeats , and observes that they shared a commitment to the matter of Ireland, but that Heaney eschews Yeats's cloudy symbols for an investment in the...
Literary responses Katharine Tynan
In his review for the Evening Herald, W. B. Yeats judged that this volume was well nigh in all things a thoroughly Irish book, springing straight from the Celtic mind and pouring itself out...
Literary responses Michael Field
Writing in The Bookman, William Butler Yeats called this collection suggestive and thoroughly unsatisfactory.
Yeats, W. B. Uncollected Prose by W.B. Yeats. Editors Frayne, John P. and Colton Johnson, Columbia University Press, 1970–1976, 2 vols.
225
He questioned Field's poetic approach. They have poetic feeling and imagination in abundance, he wrote, and yet they have...
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...
Literary responses Rosamund Marriott Watson
William Archer included RMW alongside A. E. Housman , Rudyard Kipling , Alice Meynell , E. Nesbit , and William Butler Yeats in Poets of the Younger Generation (1902).
Archer, William. Poets of the Younger Generation. John Lane, Bodley Head, 1902.
vii-viii
Her diction is pure, he...
Literary responses Katharine Tynan
W. B. Yeats , to whom KT had sent a copy of this volume, wrote, you are at your best when you write as a mother and when you remember your old home and the...
Literary responses Edith Sitwell
This book made Yeats liken ES to Swift for her passion ennobled by intensity, by endurance, by wisdom.
qtd. in
Sitwell, Edith. Taken Care Of: An Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1965.
106
Her Times obituary called these poems Sitwell's The Waste Land, suggesting that despite her still...
Literary responses Augusta Gregory
The play was very well received, drawing large and enthusiastic audiences. From the beginning, critics recognized its hypnotic effect and its potential to stir audiences to violence. One reviewer, Stephen Gwynn , questioned whether such...
Literary responses Augusta Gregory
W. B. Yeats felt that she alone of the Abbey playwrights wrote out of a spirit of pure comedy, and laugh[ed] without bitterness and with no thought but to laugh.
qtd. in
Saddlemyer, Ann. In Defence of Lady Gregory, Playwright. Dufour Editions, 1966.
31

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.