Yeats William Butler Famous Irish POET
and dramatist; leader of the nineteenth-century renewal of Celtic and traditional Irish culture. Yeats's poems, plays, and books reflected his deep love of Ireland and its myths. His life's work gained him the Noble Prize for literature in 1923 and deeply influenced a renewal of worldwide interest in Celtic culture.
Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats was just a baby when his family returned to London. He spent many of his boyhood summers at his grandparent's home in County Sligo, Ireland. He was not Catholic—his parents were part of the ruling Protestant class—but Yeats identified with the mystical pull of Irish culture. As an adult, he lived in Ireland and London. Later, he bought and refurbished a castle in Ireland. He surrounded himself with Irish aristocrats and writers who were determined to preserve Ireland's heritage, and contributed The Book of Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland to the cause. Politically, Yeats supported Ireland's bid for independence from England, and focused his career on producing literature and drama that would unite Ireland culturally. As one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, he produced, directed, and wrote plays for the company. He also encouraged young Irish playwrights to embrace an Irish, rather than English, vision of theater. Yeats's most famous plays include Cathleen ni Houlihan, The King's Threshold, and On Bailees Strand. His essays on Celtic history and culture were published as The Celtic Twilight, further influencing Irish politics towards independence, which was won in 1922. Yeats served six years as a senator of the Irish Free State, the predecessor to the Irish Republic.
Yeats's life-long devotion to poetry was ultimately his greatest contribution to the political and cultural renewal of Ireland. Irish bards or poets were part of the ancient druid religious ruling class of Celtic life, and one of its highest callings. Yeats paid homage to those ancient bards by titling his 1889 collection of early poems The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, invoking the name of the mythical Fianna poet Oisin, who lived for many centuries with the goddess Niam in Tir-na-nOg.
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