Yeats, W(illiam) (B)utler 1865-1939. Irish
poet. He was a leader of the Celtic 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
plays The Countess Cathleen 1892 and The Land
of Heart's Desire 1894. His later books of
poetry include The Wild Swans at Coole 1917
and The Winding Stair 1929. He was a senator
of the Irish Free State 1922-28. Nobel prize
1923. Yeats was born in Dublin. His early
poetry, such as The Wind Among the Reeds
1899, is romantically and exotically lyrical,
and he drew on Irish legend for his poetic
plays, including Deirdre 1907, but broke
through to a new sharply resilient style with
Responsibilities 1914. In his personal life
there was also a break: the beautiful Maude
Gonne, to whom many of his poems had been
addressed, refused to marry him, and in 1917
he married Georgie Hyde-Lees, whose work as a
medium reinforced his leanings towards mystic
symbolism, as in the prose work A Vision 1925
and 1937. His later volumes of verse include
The Tower 1928 and Last Poems and Two Plays
1939. His other prose works include
Autobiographies 1926, Dramatis Personae 1936,
Letters 1954, and My Theologies 1959.