W. B Yeats

The Countess Cathleen (1892) is a verse drama by W.B. Yeats. Dedicated to Maud Gonne, an actress and revolutionary whom Yeats unsuccessfully courted for years, The Countess Cathleen underwent several editions before being performed in its final version at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1911. Based on an Irish legend, the play, set during a period of intense famine, follows a land-owning Countess who decides to sacrifice her wealth and property in order...

Ideas of Good and Evil (1903) is a collection of wide-ranging essays by Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Writing on such subjects as the art of poetry, politics, and the occult, Yeats proves himself to be not only a master of verse and drama, but an immensely talented essayist and thorough scholar. "What is 'Popular Poetry'?" reflects on a changing Irish literary landscape which has, over the course of Yeats' career, established its own place in world literature...

Best known for his poetry, William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was also a dedicated exponent of Irish folklore. Yeats took a particular interest in the tales' mythic and magical roots. The Celtic Twilight ventures into the eerie and puckish world of fairies, ghosts, and spirits. "This handful of dreams," as the author referred to it, first appeared in 1893, and its title refers to the pre-dawn hours, when the Druids performed their rituals. It consists...

Compiled at the height of the Celtic Twilight, a movement to revive the myths and traditions of Ancient Ireland, “Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry” captures a wide range of stories, songs, poems, and firsthand accounts from artists and storytellers dedicated to the preservation of Irish culture. In "Frank Martin and the Fairies," a sickly man discusses the presence of dozens of fairies inside his weaving shop. When a child in his village...

The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) is a collection of poems by W.B. Yeats. Written while the poet was at the height of his career, The Wild Swans at Coole presents Yeats' typical concerns-aging, love, and the nature of art-against the backdrop of a decade of war. These poems, written during the First World War and the formative years of the Irish independence movement, reflect the harsh political and social realities of the era while remaining true to...

"Where There is Nothing" was written by William Butler Yeats in collaboration with Lady Augusta Gregory and Douglas Hyde in 1902.

"The King's Threshold," first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903, referred to an Irish tradition that dates back to the 7th-8th centuries of commoners enforcing hunger strikes against people of higher status to whom they were indebted. It told the story of a bard who undergoes a hunger strike against the king.

One of the greatest poets of the century, Yeats drew upon Irish folklore and myth as inspiration for much of his early poetry. Mythic themes and others are masterfully explored in this rich selection of 134 poems published between 1889 and 1914. Included are such favorites as "Lake Isle of Innisfree," "When You Are Old," "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Stolen Child," "Fergus and the Druid," "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time," "The Song of Wandering...

W. B. Yeats is one of the foremost figures of Irish literature, and in 1923 was the first Irish recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here are collected five of his finest ghost stories, including 'Rosa Alchemica', 'The Sorcerers', and 'The Wisdom of the King'.

In this volume we find one of Yeats' lesser-known works, "The Player Queen".