W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939 (v. 2)

W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939 (v. 2)
R. F. Foster (Author)
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Yeats, William Butler

The first volume in Roy Foster's magisterial biography of W.B. Yeats was hailed as "a work of huge significance" (The Atlantic Monthly) and "a stupendous historiographical feat" (Irish Sunday Independent). Now, the eagerly awaited second volume explores the complex poetic, political, and personal intricacies of Yeats's dramatic final decades, a period that saw the Easter Rebellion, the founding of the Irish state in 1922, and the production of Yeats's greatest masterpieces.
In the conclusion of this first fully authorized biography, Foster brilliantly illuminates the circumstances--the rich internal and external experiences--that shaped the great poetry of Yeats's later years: "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "The Circus Animals Desertion," "Under Ben Bulben," and many others. Yeats's pursuit of Irish nationalism and an independent Irish culture, his continued search for supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, a series of tempestuous love affairs, and his lingering obsession with Maud Gonne are all explored here with a nuance and awareness rare in literary biography. Foster gives us the very texture of Yeats's life and thought, revealing the many ways he made poetry out of the "quarrel" with himself and the upheaval around him. But this consummate biography also shows that Yeats was much more than simply a lyric poet and examines in great detail Yeats's non-poetic work--his essays, plays, polemics, and memoirs. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment and verve; while the poet himself is shown returning again and again to his governing preoccupations, sex and death.
Based on complete and unprecedented access to Yeats's papers and written with extraordinary grace and insight, W.B. Yeats, A Life offers the fullest portrait yet of the private and public life of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

• Rank: #643498 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .3 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 798 pages

W.B. Yeats: A Life I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914

W.B. Yeats: A Life I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914
R. F. Foster (Author)
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Yeats, William Butler

William Butler Yeats has cast his long shadow over the history of both modern poetry and modern Ireland for so long that his preeminence is taken for granted. Now, in the first authorized biography of Yeats to appear in over fifty years, leading Irish historian R.F. Foster travels beyond Yeats's towering image as arguably the century's greatest poet to restore a real sense of Yeats's extraordinary life as Yeats himself experienced it--what he saw, what he did, the passions and the petty squabbles that consumed him, and his alchemical ability to transmute the events of his crowded and contradictory life into enduring art.
In the first volume of this long-awaited biography, Foster covers the poet's first fifty years, bringing new light to bear on Yeats's heroic and often ruthless efforts to invent himself as a poet and public figure. Drawn from a fascinating archive of personal and contemporary documents with the cooperation of surviving members of the Yeats family, it dramatically alters long-held assumptions about the poet's background, his relationship with Maud Gonne and other women, and his roles in the great cultural and political upheavals that transformed Ireland in his lifetime. A rich and entertaining account of Yeats's boyhood days amidst the talented but troubled members of the Yeats and Pollexfen clans provides important insight into the poet's deep and lifelong connection to the Irish landscape, his early, impassioned embrace of the nationalist cause, and his later retreat to the traditions of the once grand Protestant aristocracy. In his own day Yeats attracted enemies and admirers with equal passion, and Foster vividly recreates the friendships, love affairs, and simmering rivalries that swirled about the poet's circles in London, Dublin, and Coole Park. Complementing his meticulous scholarship with a shrewd wit and a novelist's eye for detail, he chronicles the romantic disappointments, financial difficulties, experimentation with hashish and mescal, and the growing preoccupation with the occult that prefaced Yeats's attempt to unite Irish politics with high culture and his creation of an Irish national theater. Here are the poet's memorable encounters with many of the most interesting people of his time, including Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and the wildly diverse leaders of the Irish independence movement. And here at last is a full accounting of the complex bond between Yeats and the incomparable Maud Gonne, revealed as an influence eternally recreated 'like the phoenix,' affecting almost everything he did.
Poet, playwright, mystic and revolutionary; lover, confidant, and friend. This brilliant account of the public and private lives of William Butler Yeats illuminates not only the wellspring of his artistic vision, but the modern Irish identity he helped to create. It is essential reading for anyone intrigued by one of the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century.

• Rank: #1111853 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 704 pages

The Love Story of W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne

The Love Story of W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne
Margery Brady (Author)
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Yeats, William Butler

A dramatic and compelling story of the great love of W. B. Yeats for Maud Gonne, the woman he immortalised in his poems. Set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this romantic tale unfolds against a backdrop of political unrest and tenant agitation in Ireland. The poet W. B. Yeats was a central figure in the Irish literary revival while Maud Gonne, a political activist, was passionately involved in the struggle for Irish independence.

• Rank: #1680012 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.68" h x 5.04" w x .39" l, .29 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Yeats: The Man and the Masks

Yeats: The Man and the Masks
Richard Ellmann (Author)
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Yeats, William Butler

The definitive biography of William Butler Yeats

The most influential poet of his age, Yeats eluded the grasp of many who sought to explain him. In this classic critical examination of the poet, Richard Ellmann strips away the masks of his subject: occultist, senator of the Irish Free State, libidinous old man, and Nobel Prize winner.

• Rank: #285638 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.24" h x 4.76" w x .83" l, .87 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages