Irish poet, dramatist, and scholar. He was a leader of the Irish literary revival and a
founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. His early work was romantic and lyrical, as
in the poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and the plays The Countess Cathleen (1892)
and The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894). His later poetry, which includes The Wild
Swans at Coole (1917) and The Winding Stair (1929), was much influenced by
European and Eastern thought. Throughout his career Yeats’s poetic style underwent
an extraordinary process of reinvention and modernization, and shaped itself around
an array of personal, mythological, and political concerns. His deep influence on
both Irish literature and on poetry in English in general, and his stature as an
imaginative artist, can hardly be exaggerated. He was a senator of the Irish Free
State 1922–28, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
Yeats was born into a Protestant family in Dublin and was educated in both London
and Dublin. He spent much time in England, and died in the south of France, but his
most productive years were spent living in County Sligo, Ireland. Following his artist
father’s footsteps, he first studied painting but soon turned to writing. In his early
verse and poetic plays, such as The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), The Wanderings
of Oisin (1889), and Deirdre (1907), he drew heavily on Irish legend to create
allusive, sensuous imagery. Later, his work adopted a more robust, astringent style
and a tighter structure, and displayed a preoccupation with public affairs, all
evident in the collection Responsibilities (1914).