Papermacs S.
4 total works
Autobiographies
by W. B. Yeats, William H. O'Donnell, and Douglas N. Archibald
Published December 1955
Autobiographies consists of six autobiographical works that William Butler Yeats published together in the mid-1930s to form a single, extraordinary memoir of the first fifty-eight years of his life, from his earliest memories of childhood to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume provides a vivid series of personal accounts of a wide range of figures, and it describes Yeats's work as poet and playwright, as a founder of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, his involvement with Irish nationalism, and his fascination with occultism and visions. This book is most compelling as Yeats's own account of the growth of his poetic imagination. Yeats thought that a poet leads a life of allegory, and that his works are comments upon it. Autobiographies enacts his ruling belief in the connections and coherence between the life that he led and the works that he wrote. It is a vision of personal history as art, and so it is the one truly essential companion to his poems and plays. Edited by William H. O'Donnell and Douglas N.
Archibald, this volume is available for the first time with invaluable explanatory notes and includes previously unpublished passages from candidly explicit first drafts.
Archibald, this volume is available for the first time with invaluable explanatory notes and includes previously unpublished passages from candidly explicit first drafts.
Yeats began his career by writting a series of plays in his teens, and finished his last play, "The Death of Cuchulain" shortly before his death at the age of 73. Yeats was a man of the theatre just as much as a lyric poet, managing Dublin's famous Abbey Theatre for many years. With an introduction and notes on each play, Professor Jeffares has selected a total of 12 plays which range from the patriotic "Cathleen ni Hoolihan", the mixture of farce and symbolism in "The Player Queen" and the realistic "The Words Upon the Window-Pane" and the wild fantasy "The Herne's Egg".
Contents: a packet for Ezra Pound; stories of Michael Robartes and his friends: an extract from a record made by his pupils; phases of moon; great wheel; completed symbol; soul in judgment; great year of ancients; dove or swan; all soul's night, an epilogue. With many figures and illustrations.