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Yeats in Howth
This new book maps the time the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats lived in Howth, his attempts to make his work catch fire, and his struggle to become an artist. The book reveals the enduring influence this Dublin location had on his work. And it explores the young writer’s supernatural interests, his fledgling verse, and his proximity to madness. It recalls encounters with his first love Laura Armstrong, and captures moments of profound poetic inspiration and fragile beauty such as Yeats’s legendary sea cliff walk with his great unrequited love Maud Gonne – in a poetic landscape fit for eternity’s ghosts.
181 pages, Paperback
Published June 28, 2024
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June 14, 2025
I read most of this on Yeats Day, 13th June 2025. Yeats has been with me since I was 18 or 19 — it’s been called an obsession, but it’s a deep unscholarly compulsion in my world — much of his poetry has permanent residence in my head. This is usually only recited when accidentally conjured via the dark occult elixir of Guinness. 😂 Anyway…
This biography is a concise and beautiful wander into the time Yeats spent in Howth, just north of Dublin, from 1880 at the age of 15. McNally through evidence and sometimes openly speculative, but careful interpretation, weaves thoughtful questions about how Howth influenced young Yeats as an emerging poet.
McNally writes:
“Each generation finds the Yeats they seek. And all overlook areas.”
I have read a few accounts about Yeats where writers express the capacity to so easily create their own version of Yeats. He is almost a complex adaptive system as opposed to a person. I think that McNally has done an excellent job not to create a version/vision of Yeats, but to invite readers into wondering about the relationship Yeats had with Howth as much as Sligo. What haven’t we seen while gazing so deeply at Sligo?
This exploration of place, stories and the people of Howth is absolutely worth while to wander into, for anyone curious about Yeats early poetry and the symbols and mythology of The Celtic Twilight. Yeats’s Howth of “caves, thickets and fairies” has me aching to go back there one day with new eyes and my threadbare cloak of dreams. The short stitch in time I spent in Howth gave me a personal connection to this book and I feel closer to Yeats’s earlier poetry for reading it.
This biography is a concise and beautiful wander into the time Yeats spent in Howth, just north of Dublin, from 1880 at the age of 15. McNally through evidence and sometimes openly speculative, but careful interpretation, weaves thoughtful questions about how Howth influenced young Yeats as an emerging poet.
McNally writes:
“Each generation finds the Yeats they seek. And all overlook areas.”
I have read a few accounts about Yeats where writers express the capacity to so easily create their own version of Yeats. He is almost a complex adaptive system as opposed to a person. I think that McNally has done an excellent job not to create a version/vision of Yeats, but to invite readers into wondering about the relationship Yeats had with Howth as much as Sligo. What haven’t we seen while gazing so deeply at Sligo?
This exploration of place, stories and the people of Howth is absolutely worth while to wander into, for anyone curious about Yeats early poetry and the symbols and mythology of The Celtic Twilight. Yeats’s Howth of “caves, thickets and fairies” has me aching to go back there one day with new eyes and my threadbare cloak of dreams. The short stitch in time I spent in Howth gave me a personal connection to this book and I feel closer to Yeats’s earlier poetry for reading it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review