W. B. Yeats - Böcker

W.B. Yeats' life spanned the end of the nineteeth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and his poetry reflects all the turmoil, fervour, traditions and revolutions of that period. From the quiet beauty of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' to the apocalyptic resonance of 'The Second Coming', this collection shows the impact of a great poet whose startling relevance to our own times grows more and more evident.

rich and distinguished work of scholarship Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Listener wonderfully edited by John Kelly ... nothing goes unexplained. The notes provide, often wittily, historical details about the 1880's and 1890's that no one has previously compiled. Kelly has performed many extraordinary feats of research. The biographical notes at the end are well written and helpful, and the analytical index on Yeats is just what is needed. Richard Ellman, The New Republic it is no exaggeration to claim that it marks a milestone in Yeats scholarship. The significance of this first volume lies not only in the content of the letters alone, but also in the sheer mass of beckground erudition assembled in this volume ... for a long, long time this monumental edition of Yeat's letters will be enlightening and delighting us. John P. Frayne, Journal of English and Germanic Philology This first volume sets a superlative standard for the books to come. Virtually every editorial and typographical decision taken here contributes to the usefulness, legibility, and attractiveness of the work. The Modern Language Review

The letters in this volume, the majority never before published, vividly document the period in which Yeats, having left the family house in Bedford Park, began a new life in Bloomsbury; as he later recalled, `a new scene was set, new actors appeared'. With his association with the Savoy magazine and its circle of decadents, he achieved the financial emancipation that enabled him to begin his first affair with Olivia Shakespear. 1896 also saw the beginning of the most important and creative friendship of his life, that with Lady Gregory; other influential friendships, such as those with Synge and W. T. Horton, were forged. In 1898, Yeats's friendship with George Moore expanded, only to contract with the disastrous collaboration on Diarmuid and Grania.It was a period of considerable unhappiness for Yeats. His love for Maud Gonne was hopeless; in December 1898, she was to tell him of her long-standing affair with Lucian Millevoye (by whom she had two children). The crisis produced a run of confused and incoherent letters to Lady Gregory. The letters also document Yeats's greatest early period of political activity. He organized the centenary celebrations of the 1798 uprising, while combating double agents within the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. In 1897, he began planning a National Theatre and letters chart a massive expansion of theatrical activity. Letter by letter, we see how private concerns, artistic quarrels and exhausting political life forced him to develop a public persona. Rich and readable notes provide a narrative of these years, explaining allusions and setting the correspondence in its cultural and political contexts, as well as relating it to the emergence of Yeats's canon. The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats is redefining the territory of modern literary history and this volume, with its valuable biographical and thematic appendices, is indispensable to anyone interested in the development of modern poetry, Irish drama and cultural history.

The letters in this volume, the majority never before published, vividly document a tunultuous period in Yeats's life. They chart his transformation from a late Romantic, `Celtic' poet into a powerful and astringent modernist, the foundation of the Abbey Theatre and development of his own palywriting career, the emotional devastation of his beloved Maud Gonne's marriage to a man he despised, the encouragement of promising young writers including Joyce and Synge, and the impact of his first exposure to the United States. Letter by letter we see how private concerns and public controversies forced him to redefine his views on artistic freedom and responsibility, and to reshape his style. Rich and readable notes provide a narrative of these years, explaining allusions, and setting the correspondence in its cultural and political contexts as well as relating it to Yeats's canon as a whole. This book will be indispenable to anyone interested in the development of modern poetry, drama, and cultural history.

This authoritative edition was first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Yeats's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by plays, critical writings, and letters - to give the essence of his work and thinking.W. B. Yeats was born in 1865, only 38 years after the death of William Blake, and died in 1939, the contemporary of Ezra Pound and James Joyce. His career crossed two centuries, and this volume represents the full range of his achievement, from the Romantic early poems of Crossways and the symbolist masterpiece The Wind Among the Reeds to his last poems. Myth and folk-tale influence both his poems and his plays, represented here by Cathleen ni Houlihan and Deirdre among others. The importance of the spirit world to his life and work is evident in his critical essays and occult writings, and the anthology also contains political speeches, autobiographical writings, and a selection of his letters.This one-volume collection of poems and prose offers a unique perspective on the connectedness of Yeats's literary output, showing how his aesthetic, spiritual, and political development was reflected in everything he wrote. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet...'By turns joyful and despairing, some of the twentieth century's greatest verse on fleeting youth, fervent hopes and futile sacrifice.

The Tower was W. B. Yeats's first major collection of poetry as Nobel Laureate after the receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923. It is considered to be one of his most influential collections. The title refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917 and later restored. The Tower includes some of his greatest and most innovative poems including 'Sailing to Byzantium', a lyrical meditation on man's disillusionment with the physical world; 'Leda and the Swan', a violent and graphic take on the Greek myth of Leda and Zeus and 'Among School Children', a poetic contemplation of life, love and the creative process.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books‘Under bare Ben Bulben’s headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.An ancestor was rector thereLong years ago, a church stands near,By the road an ancient cross.No marble, no conventional phrase;On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut:Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.Horseman, pass by!’

Contents: a packet for Ezra Pound; stories of Michael Robartes and his friends: an extract from a record made by his pupils; phases of moon; great wheel; completed symbol; soul in judgment; great year of ancients; dove or swan; all soul's night, an epilogue. With many figures and illustrations.

This edition of the complete poems of W.B.Yeats represents a major landmark in Yeats scholarship. Here in one volume is the canon of Yeats's verse, edited and fully annotated by A.Norman Jeffares and arranged in the order Yeats wanted. Also an appendix by Warwick Gould.

Autobiographies consists of six autobiographical works that William Butler Yeats published together in the mid-1930s to form a single, extraordinary memoir of the first fifty-eight years of his life, from his earliest memories of childhood to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume provides a vivid series of personal accounts of a wide range of figures, and it describes Yeats's work as poet and playwright, as a founder of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, his involvement with Irish nationalism, and his fascination with occultism and visions. This book is most compelling as Yeats's own account of the growth of his poetic imagination. Yeats thought that a poet leads a life of allegory, and that his works are comments upon it. Autobiographies enacts his ruling belief in the connections and coherence between the life that he led and the works that he wrote. It is a vision of personal history as art, and so it is the one truly essential companion to his poems and plays. Edited by William H. O'Donnell and Douglas N.Archibald, this volume is available for the first time with invaluable explanatory notes and includes previously unpublished passages from candidly explicit first drafts.

W.B. Yeats was one of Ireland’s greatest writers and arguably the finest twentieth-century poet in the English language. This book brings together over seventy of his poems from all stages of Yeats’s extraordinary life: a wonderful legacy that shows, without a doubt, that his heart belonged to Ireland – ‘I am’, he wrote, ‘of Ireland’. Each poem is beautifully complemented by a wide range of paintings, prints and drawings, the majority by Irish or Irish-based artists and often ones who were contemporaries of the poet. Many of the pictures can be seen in Irish public collections, particularly the National Gallery of Ireland. Complete with a detailed introduction and brief notes on the artists, this is the perfect gift for any Yeats fan.

In this elegantly designed, jacketed hardcover, William Butler Yeats delivers a vast collection of stories, songs, and poetry of his beloved home country, Ireland, and its historical and legendary past.Irish Folk and Fairy Tales includes legendary stories “Trooping Fairies,” “The Banshee,” “Kings and Queens,” “Giants,” “Devils” and the enigmatic “Irish Leprechaun” that will delight and entertain readers of all ages. Poets, readers, children, and adults will all fall in love with these classic Irish folk and fairy tales from one of the world’s greatest poets, W. B. Yeats.Essential volumes for the shelves of every classic literature lover, the Chartwell Classics series includes beautifully presented works and collections from some of the most important authors in literary history. Chartwell Classics are the editions of choice for the most discerning literature buffs. Other titles in the series include: The Essential Tales & Poems of Edgar Allen Poe; The Essential Tales of H.P. Lovecraft; The Federalist Papers; The Inferno; The Call of the Wild and White Fang; Moby Dick; The Odyssey; Pride and Prejudice; Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Emma; The Great Gatsby; The Secret Garden; Anne of Green Gables; The Phantom of the Opera; The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital; The Republic; Frankenstein; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; The Picture of Dorian Gray; Meditations; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass; A Tales of Two Cities; Beowulf; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Little Women; Wuthering Heights; Peter Pan; Persuasion; Aesop’s Fables; The Constitution of the United States and Selected Writings; Crime and Punishment; Dracula; Great Expectations; The Iliad; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; The War of the Worlds; The Time Machine and The Invisible Man; and The Alchemist.

In this highly giftable volume, the best-loved legends of the Emerald Isle come to life. Discover the magic of Ireland’s most treasured stories with Irish Folk and Fairy Tales. William Butler Yeats’ charming storytelling style captures the spirit of Ireland’s timeless myths and legends. Young and old will love these stories of tricksters and spectres, kings, queens, and princesses, in an heirloom edition that includes:A stunning, foil-embossed, faux-leather coverBeautifully designed endpapersMore than 50 tales and poemsA must-have for every home library, Irish Folk and Fairy Tales is a book that you’ll reach for again and again, destined to grace your bookshelves for years to come.Chartwell Deluxe Editions feature beautifully designed heirloom volumes of literary classics. Other Chartwell Deluxe Editions include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Dracula, The Republic, The Iliad, The Essential Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Meditations, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories.

From reviews of The Cornell Yeats series:"For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artists."—Irish Literary Supplement"I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."—A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound"The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."—Yeats Annual (1983)Written during a period of illness in 1935–1936, Yeats's play combines frank sexual content with bizarre imagery from the Indian and tribal Irish traditions. This edition provides a full transcription of the only extant manuscript version of the play.

Based on a folktale called "The Priest's Soul," which Yeats first encountered in 1888, The Hour-Glass was written as both a play in prose and a drama in verse over the course of more than thirty years. This volume brings together all extant manuscripts of The Hour-Glass, from a handwritten three-page fragment of the 1902 prose version to Yeats's typescripts of the 1922 verse rendition.

Words upon the Window Pane, first staged in 1930, is W. B. Yeats's most powerful and brilliant dramatic exploration of the occult, in which he had a lifelong interest, and an affirmation of Anglo-Irish Protestant cultural ascendancy. Written at Lady Gregory's Coole Park estate, it features a séance in which Jonathan Swift's voice is projected through a medium. Like Yeats, Swift was both politician and poet, and taking Swift as his subject allowed Yeats to cloak a political message under personal character.Quite probably based on an obscure one-act play called Swift and Stella by Charles Edward Lawrence, Lady Gregory's editor, the play is centered on a romantic triangle involving Jonathan Swift and two women, Vanessa and Stella. Yeats's use of a séance as a frame permits him to compare the present with the past by putting twentieth-century Dubliners side by side with Swift's contemporaries. This volume of the Cornell Yeats contains transcriptions and photographic reproductions of the drafts of Words upon the Window Pane, with variant readings from proofs, typescripts, and notebook entries, as well as other materials pertaining to its writing, publication, and performance.

The Land of Heart's Desire, staged at the Avenue Theatre in London in 1894, marks W. B. Yeats's first use of Irish folklore in a play produced in the commercial theater, with important consequences for his career as a dramatist. This book includes transcriptions and photographs of the surviving holograph manuscripts of the play, reproductions of Yeats's own notes and revisions, and other materials related to stage productions and the resulting changes he made to the text.After Maud Gonne refused his offer of marriage in the summer of 1893, Yeats coped with his disappointment by burying himself in work. He composed a number of poems based on Irish folklore that would not see publication until 1899 and took steps to shape a literary renaissance in Ireland. In many of the pieces he wrote at this time, he developed the idea, sustained and refined throughout his life, that folklore was the foundation of a living mythology.

"He has chosen death: Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom, An old and foolish custom, that if a man Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve Upon another's threshold till he die, The common people, for all time to come, Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold, Even though it be the King's."—from The King's Threshold The King's Threshold was first performed in Dublin by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903 and first published in New York in 1904. The Cornell Yeats edition of this play about a bard's hunger strike includes the preliminary notes and first prose drafts dictated by Yeats to his patron and collaborator, Lady Gregory, in March and April 1903. As well as providing an outline of the play, these preliminary notes identify contemporary persons on whom some of the characters were based.Other features of this edition of The King's Threshold include Yeats's first blank verse drafts, heavily revised and corrected typescripts and galley proofs, and notes for the changes made between 1904 and 1906. A major revision added a tragic ending to the version published in 1922, and this ending has remained in place ever since. Uniquely, this edition presents all four versions of the play, spanning thirty years of Yeats's efforts to perfect it. Declan Kiely presents the biographical and historical context of the play's genesis and Yeats's revisions, and gives accounts of several productions and revivals of the play. The Introduction also explores the relationship between theatrical production and textual revision.

From reviews of The Cornell Yeats series:"For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artist."—Irish Literary Supplement"I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."—A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound"The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."—Yeats Annual (1983)The four short works collected in this book were among the earliest plays to be authored collaboratively by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Written in the pivotal years during which the "Irish Literary Theatre" experiment of 1899–1901 began to evolve into what would become the Abbey Theatre, they show both writers engaging with questions central to the early Irish dramatic movement: How should "Irishness" be represented on the stage? To what extent should artists engage directly with Nationalist politics? And what role might literature play in the creation of a new Ireland? The manuscripts presented here chart the evolution of two plays published over Yeats's name: "Cathleen ni Houlihan"—the pair's most successful collaboration, and the work that confirmed Yeats's credentials as a Nationalist writer—and the "peasant" farce "The Pot of Broth." This book also includes manuscript material for "The Country of the Young" and "Heads or Harps," which the writers left unpublished and unproduced during their lifetimes.

From reviews of The Cornell Yeats series:"For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artist."—Irish Literary Supplement"I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."—A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound"The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."—Yeats Annual (1983)The manuscripts transcribed and reproduced in this volume of the Cornell Yeats were written from spring 1933 through December 1934. "Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems" is the third section of W. B. Yeats's book A Full Moon in March (1935), following the two plays "A Full Moon in March" and "The King of the Great Clock Tower." David R. Clark's introduction relates biographical events to what the manuscripts show about the chronological order in which the poems were written. The poems, which illuminate such facets of Yeats's life as the poet's flirtations with fascism and Hinduism and his concern, at age sixty-eight, that his poetic powers were waning, are presented in the order in which they appeared in A Full Moon in March.Of the twenty-one poems here, eighteen are called songs. Only "Parnell's Funeral" itself is un-songlike, a somber and powerful declaration made by a Parnellite. Each poem is accompanied by comments on its content and its manuscripts. Ninety-nine illustrations show Yeats's handwritten drafts, typescripts, and revisions. Because of the poems' exotic references, a long section of the introduction provides relevant material from Yeats's letters and commentary and an independent analysis of each poem. Early in his career Yeats, with his fellow poets in the Rymers' Club, had "taken delight in poetry that was, before all else, speech or song, and could hold the attention of a fitting audience like a good play or a good conversation." Throughout "Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems," Yeats's desire for a direct lyrical urge is evident.

From reviews of The Cornell Yeats series:"For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artists."—Irish Literary Supplement"I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."—A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound"The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."—Yeats Annual (1983)Yeats is a poet as much of fact as of feeling. Every work of his has a source—whether from folklore, legend, mythology, the occult, or history: each a source that for him had a definite objective reality. The demands of this world and of that other world of Yeatsian spiritual reality often conflict. His play The Only Jealousy of Emer, particularly in its early drafts, offers a vivid portrayal of such a struggle. It marks one of the turning points of Yeats's career, because in its final form it is a synthesis of two profound experiences that were to shape his later work: his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917 brought him a certain degree of contentment with the joys of this world, while her automatic script provided a philosophical framework for his poems and plays.Fighting the Waves—a prose version of The Only Jealousy of Emer staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1929 and revived in London in 1930, but never performed again—is an integral part of the history of Yeats's composition and revision of The Only Jealousy of Emer, and its manuscript drafts are therefore shown in this volume as part of the direct sequence of the composition of The Only Jealousy of Emer, even though Yeats himself ultimately considered Fighting the Waves a lesser work.

George Moore involved W. B. Yeats personally in the revision of a novel of Moore's that contained a character based on Yeats; this involvement led to the pair's collaboration in writing a play based on Diarmuid and Grania, one of the best-known tragic tales of Celtic mythology. At the late stages of composition, the authors decided to add songs, and Edward Elgar provided the music. The play opened at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on October 21, 1901.Although the collaboration had been difficult—Yeats and Moore disagreed frequently, mainly about style—the production was well received. Controversy arose, however, because English actors played these most Irish of characters. After the play was produced, Yeats, whose commitment had occasionally seemed to waver, defended it against all criticism. The manuscript materials included in the Cornell Yeats edition of Diarmuid and Grania provide a full record of the disputes and revisions that culminated in the final draft. In his Introduction, J. C. C. Mays writes, "If one looks beyond words or passages that can be tagged with an author's name and a specific date, one can see signatures of each author no less clearly than such tags afford and perhaps see each writer more pervasively inhabiting the characters and situations of the play."