biography
| name: |
Yeats, W(illiam) B(utler)
|
pronunciation:
[yayts]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1865–1939)
|
| biography:
| Poet and playwright, born near Dublin, Ireland. Educated at schools in London and Dublin, he became an art student, then turned to writing. A leader of the Irish Literary Revival, he is a major voice of modern Irish poetry in English. In 1888 he published ‘The Wanderings of Oisin’, a long narrative poem that established his reputation. The Celtic Twilight, a book of peasant legends, appeared in 1893. With his patron, Lady Gregory, he founded the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899, and was a director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, from 1904. He wrote nearly 30 plays, including The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), and Cathleen ni Houlihan (1903). He adopted a more direct style with Responsibilities (1914), which also marks a switch to contemporary subjects. The symbolic system described in A Vision (1925) informs many of his best-known poems, which appeared in The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929), and A Full Moon in March (1935). Much of his best poetry is inspired by personal longing, notably his unrequited love for the revolutionary Maud Gonne and for a mythical Irish Golden Age. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, and also became a senator of the Irish Free State (1922–8). His Collected Poems were published in 1950. |
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