W. B. Yeats

Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland, and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.

About W. B. Yeats in brief

Summary W. B. YeatsYeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland, and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly supportive of the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of the late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. His subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his country’s biography. He helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He did not distinguish himself academically, and an early report describes his performance as “only fair in fair spelling”. Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages, he became fascinated by biology and zoology and was fascinated by natural history on natural history and chemistry on Slough.

He died in Dublin at the age of 80, and is buried in Glasnevin, County Wicklow, with his wife and three children. He is survived by his wife, Mary Butler, and two daughters, Susan Mary Pollexfen and Elizabeth Mary Yeats, and a son, John Butler Yeats. His great-great-grandfather had in 1773 married Mary Butler of a landed family in County Kildare. Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler. Mary was of the Butler of Neigham Gowran family, descended from an illegitimate brother of the 8th Earl of Ormond. At the time of his marriage, William’s father was studying law, but would later pursue art studies at Heatherley School of Fine Art. In 1879, the family moved to Bedford Park taking a two-year lease on Woodstock Road. For financial reasons, the first living at the end of the first year of the family’s first living in the suburbs of Dublin was Harold Cross, who died in 1880. William’s brother Jack became an esteemed painter, while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary—known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. His father, John, was a descendant of Jervis Yeats,. a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter, and died in 1712. His mother, Susan, came from Sligo, from a wealthy merchant family, which owned a milling and shipping business.