e-artnow presents this meticulously edited and formatted W.B. Yeats Volume 1: The Wind Among the Reeds The Old Age of Queen Maeve Baile and Aillinn In the Seven Woods Ballads and Lyrics The Rose The Wanderings of Oisin Volume 2: The King's Threshold On Baile's Strand Deirdre The Shadowy Waters Volume 3: The Countess Cathleen The Land of Heart's Desire The Unicorn from the Stars Volume 4: The Hour-Glass Cathleen ni Houlihan The Golden Helmet The Irish Dramatic Movement Volume 5: The Celtic Twilight Stories of Red Hanrahan Volume 6: What's 'Popular Poetry'? Speaking to the Psaltery Magic The Happiest of the Poets The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry At Stratford-on-Avon William Blake and the Imagination William Blake and His Illustrations to the 'Divine Comedy' Symbolism in Painting The Symbolism of Poetry The Theatre The Celtic Element in Literature The Autumn of the Body The Moods The Body of the Father Christian Rosencrux The Return of Ulysses Ireland and the Arts The Galway Plains Emotion of Multitude Volume 7: The Secret Rose Rosa Alchemica The Tables of the Law The Adoration of the Magi John Sherman Dhoya Volume 8: Discoveries Edmund Spencer Poetry and Tradition Modern Irish Poetry Lady Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men Mr. Synge and His Plays Lionel Johnson The Pathway
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. --from Wikipedia