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
Literary responses Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
The Academy gave a favourable review but found the preface unclear. William Butler Yeats admired the book,
Melville, Joy. Mother of Oscar. John Murray, 1999.
209-10
and wrote that it revealed the innermost heart of the Celt.
qtd. in
Melville, Joy. Mother of Oscar. John Murray, 1999.
209
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...
Literary responses Katharine Tynan
W. B. Yeats wrote to her of this book: You have the gift to describe many people with sympathy and even with admiration and yet to leave them their distinct characters.
qtd. in
Hinkson, Pamela. “The Friendship of Yeats and Katharine Tynan, II: Later Days of the Irish Literary Movement”. The Fortnightly, No. 1043 n.s., Nov. 1953, pp. 323-36.
331
Literary responses Edna O'Brien
Jonathan Yardley , reviewing for the Washington Post, stressed O'Brien's brilliance and her nationality. If what you're looking for is a map of Ireland, the fiction of Edna O'Brien will do just fine. She...
Literary responses Martin Ross
Most of the reviews were excellent, but the Westminster Gazette gave the book a furious tearing.
qtd. in
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber, 1968.
103
Just from excerpts quoted in reviews, W. B. Yeats judged the book to be very big.
qtd. in
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber, 1968.
129
Literary responses Florence Farr
Reviews were mixed: some found the plays bizarre, and others (including Yeats ) admired their religious fervour.
Johnson, Josephine. Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw’s new woman. Colin Smythe, 1975.
91
They were revived for a charity performance in London in August 1993.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Literary responses Charlotte Brooke
CB was warmly appreciated in Ireland. She influenced there a parallel effort to preserve traditional music as she had preserved traditional words: that of Edward Bunting , who edited in 1796 the first volume...
Literary responses James Joyce
Though Joyce often railed against hisnative city, he felt that depicting it made him a pioneer. Dublin, he wrote, was second only to London among British cities and was three times the size of Venice:...
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, 1936, p. vii - xv.
x
As well as Horses, he particularly praised Matrix.
Literary responses James Joyce
Yeats said, I have read in a paper called The Egoist certain chapters of a new novel, a disguised autobiography, which increases my conviction that he is the most remarkable new talent in Ireland today...
Literary responses Florence Farr
FF 's performances won the acclaim of several critics, including Yeats himself, and her recitation technique was for a short time heralded as a new art form: according to William Archer , in this system...
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...
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 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 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.

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