13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939

Yeats was born in Dublin and spent his childhood in County Sligo and London, returning to Dublin at fifteen. His family was Anglo-Irish (belonging to the landowning class) but Yeats closely identified with the Celtic Revival movement which opposed the imposition of English culture in Ireland; Irish mythology and folklore are referenced through much of his work (see, for example, The Song of Wandering Aengus). He also had a lifelong interest in mysticism and the occult (see “A Vision”, for example) and was open in expressing his somewhat unusual beliefs about fairies and astrology.

Yeats was profoundly influenced by the Irish nationalist and revolutionary, Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1899 (she rejected his marriage proposal the same year) and deeply involved in politics in Ireland – he was appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922 and served for six years.

Although now primarily remembered for his poetry, Yeats was also a major playwright and a founder, with Lady Gregory and others, of the Irish Theatre (now called Abbey Theatre) in Dublin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, chiefly in recognition of his dramatic works. He is one of the few recipients of the prize to write their greatest works after its being awarded.

He married Miss George Hyde-Lees in 1917 (having been rejected a few weeks earlier by Iseult Gonne – Maud’s daughter) and they had two children; Anne Butler Yeats, born in 1919 and William Michael Yeats, born in 1921.