W B Yeats Estate

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is one of the greatest English language poets, a status confirmed by the award of the 1923 Novel Prize for Literature.  He was the founder of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre.  At various times revolutionary patriot, upholder of an idealized Celtic tradition, a Senator of the Irish Free State, Yeats was also a student of the occult and other arcane.  His poetry draws upon Irish mythology, as well as wide, eclectic reading in literature, history and philosophy and contains his own curious mixture of spiritualism and mysticism.  He stands at the crossroads between the exuberant romanticism of Blake and Shelly, and the gritty realism of such modern masters as Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney.