William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, author, playwright and activist during the early 20th Century.

William Butler Yeats is considered one of the cornerstones of 20th Century Literature. His importance to Irish letters is noted by his 1923 Nobel Prize, which the Nobel committee claimed gave "expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats, influenced in part by William Blake, had a lifelong fascination with the occult, theosophical, and spiritualist movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

• The Wanderings of Oisin
• At the Hawk's Well
• The Tower
• Last Poems

• June 13, 1865: Born, Sandymount, County Dublin

• 1877: Attended Godolphin Primary School

• 1884: Attended Metropolitan School of Art

• 1889: Met Maud Gonne

• 1890: Co-founded the Rhymers' Club | Admitted into the Order of the Golden Dawn

• 1899: Co-established Irish Literary Theatre

• 1902: Helped establish Dun Emer Press

• 1913: Met Ezra Pound

• 1916: Married Georgie Hyde-Lees

• 1922: Appointed to Irish Senate

• 1923: Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature

• January 28, 1939: Died

• The Majority of the following links are to the Literature Network, which has pop-ups

• 1889: The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems

• 1892: Countess Cathleen

• 1893: The Celtic Twilight

• 1897: The Secret Rose

• 1899: "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

• 1914: "No Second Troy"

• 1921: Michael Robartes and the Dancer | Four Years

• 1928: "The Tower"

• 1929: The Winding of The Stairs and Other Poems