The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales | Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler(1865–1939), Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and anthologist. He was born in Dublin and spent part of his childhood and adolescence there, the remainder being divided between London and the west of Ireland, particularly County Sligo, where his mother's family, the Pollexfens, lived. It was in Sligo, a part of the country especially rich in local legend and folklore, that he was first attracted to the world of Irish traditional story. This interest, while it remained with him throughout his life and writings, was to be of major importance in his earliest work, which began to be published from 1885 onwards. The success of this early work, added to his involvement in the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, soon ensured for Yeats a role as principal figure of the Irish literary revival. This movement had as one of its main goals the restoration of Ireland's cultural heritage, a restoration which involved a rediscovery of...
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