Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler ( 1865 – 1939 ),eldest son of J. B. Yeats and brother of Jack Yeats , both celebrated painters. He was born in Dublin and educated at the Godolphin School, Hammersmith, and the High School, Dublin. For three years he studied at the School of Art in Dublin, where with a fellow student, G. Russell (Æ), he developed an interest in mystic religion and the supernatural. At 21 he abandoned art as a profession in favour of literature, writing John Sherman and Dhoya ( 1891 ) and editing The Poems of William Blake ( 1893 ), The Works of William Blake (with F. J. Ellis , 3 vols, 1893 ), and Poems of Spenser ( 1906 ). A nationalist, he helped to found an Irish Literary Society in London in 1891 and another in Dublin in 1892 ; and he subsequently applied himself to the creation of an Irish national theatre, an achievement which, with the help of Lady Gregory and...
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