William Butler Yeats

One of the key figures in 20th century literature, William Butler Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, a founder member of the Irish National Theatre and later director of the Abbey Theatre. His early years were spent between Dublin, London, and Sligo and his first works display his fascination with Irish legends and the occult. A first volume of verse, Mosada, A Dramatic Poem, was published in 1886, followed by The Wanderings of Oisin in 1889. That same year, Yeats met the actress and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne who would inspire his work for many years. In 1922, the Irish Free State awarded him a seat in the Senate. The following year, Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature, yet his perhaps most celebrated collection, The Tower, was published in 1928. Yeats had defined the intellectual and symbolic background to this and later works in A Vision (1925). Two more collections of poetry followed, The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and the posthumously published Last Poems and Plays (1940). W. B. Yeats died in Southern France in January 1939. He was reinterred in Sligo, 'under bare Ben Bulben's head', in 1948.