William Butler YEATS (1865-1939), son of J.B. Yeats and brother of Jack Yeats, both celebrated painters, was born in Dublin and educated at the Godolphin School, Hammer-smith, and the High School of Art in Dublin, where he developed an interest in mystic religion and supernatural. He was friend of mystical writer George Russell and became a member of the Dublin Hermetic Society. At 21 he abandoned art as a profession in favour of literature, writing “John Sherman and Dhoya” (1891). Yeats´s early study of Irish lore and legends resulted in “Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry” (1888), “The Celtic Twilight” (1893), and “The Secret Rose” (1897). With each succeeding collections of poems, Yeats moved further from the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite style of the 1890s. From 1922 to 1928, he served as a senator of the Irish Free State and was chairman of the commission on coinage. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in south of France, but in 1948 his body was brought back to Ireland and interred at Drumcliff in Sligo, where much of his childhood had been spent. **
Description:
William Butler YEATS (1865-1939), son of J.B. Yeats and brother of Jack Yeats, both celebrated painters, was born in Dublin and educated at the Godolphin School, Hammer-smith, and the High School of Art in Dublin, where he developed an interest in mystic religion and supernatural. He was friend of mystical writer George Russell and became a member of the Dublin Hermetic Society. At 21 he abandoned art as a profession in favour of literature, writing “John Sherman and Dhoya” (1891). Yeats´s early study of Irish lore and legends resulted in “Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry” (1888), “The Celtic Twilight” (1893), and “The Secret Rose” (1897). With each succeeding collections of poems, Yeats moved further from the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite style of the 1890s. From 1922 to 1928, he served as a senator of the Irish Free State and was chairman of the commission on coinage. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in south of France, but in 1948 his body was brought back to Ireland and interred at Drumcliff in Sligo, where much of his childhood had been spent. **