13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939 By Niall Ó Cearbhaill W.B. Yeats
Mar 31, 2015
Who was W.B. Yeats?William Butler Yeats
was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1865 and died in 1939. He was a poet and dramatist and some of the poems he wrote are among the most well known poems in Ireland and around the world.
His father John was born in County Down. John was a portrait artist and had a belief that there was no God and that art was important for everything.
His mother Susan Pollexfen born in County Sligo came from a very wealthy family who owned a milling and shipping business.
He was the eldest of four children and all the children were very artistic. Jack his brother became a hugely known artist while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary were interested in arts and crafts.
Family
Yeats was fascinated by Irish folklore and that influenced his first book of poems The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems published in 1889. The poems were about Irish heroes Oisin, Finn, Aengus and St. Patrick. He also published many romantic and personal books of poems such as The Celtic Twilight in 1893. The Wind among the Reeds won the Royal Academy Prize as the best book of poems in 1899.
Poems
Marriage In September 1917 at the
age of 51 Yeats proposed to a friend he had met a couple of years earlier called Georgie Hyde Lees. Although she was 25 years old and Yeats had proposed to a different women a few months before she said yes and they got married that October. They went on to have two children Ann and Michael.
Nobel Prize
Click icon to add picture
In December
1923 Yeats
was awarded
the Nobel
Prize in
Literature.
He travelled
to Stolkolm,
Sweden to
collect his
award.