• Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (London: Faber & Faber 1941), and Do. [rep. edn.] with a foreword by Richard Ellmann (Oxford: OUP 1967, 1979), 297pp.
• J. M. Hone, W. B. Yeats 1865-1939 (London: Macmillan 1942; NY 1943), 535pp., index; Do., 2nd ed. (1962).
• Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (London: Macmillan 1948, 1949); Do., [rev. ed.] (London: Macmillan 1962); Do. [new edn.] (OUP 1979).
• A. Norman Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet ([q.pub.] 1949; new edn. (1962), Do., [3rd. Edn.] (London: Cathie Kyle; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1996).
• Frank Tuohy, Yeats: An Illustrated Biography (London: Macmillan 1976), 232pp.
• A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Life (London: Macmillan 1988).
• Alasdair D. F. Macrae, W. B. Yeats, A Literary Life [Literary Lives] (London: Macmillan 1994), 204pp. & index; [partially available at Google Books - online.]
• R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, 2 vols. (OUP 1996-2003) - Vol. I: “The Apprentice Mage” (1996), xxxi, 640pp.; Vol. II: “The Arch-Poet” (2003), xxiv, 797pp. [as infra].
• Keith Alldritt, W. B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu (London: John Murray 1997), 388pp.
• Stephen Coote, W. B. Yeats: A Life (Hodder and Stoughton 1997), 624pp., ill. [16 pls.].
• Terence Brown, W. B. Yeats: A Critical Life (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1999), 410pp. [ded. to Brendan Kennelly]; rep. as The Life of W. B. Yeats (Oxford: Blackwell 2001), pb., 432pp.
• Brenda Maddox, George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W. B. Yeats (London: Picador 1999; rep. 2000), 444pp.
• W. J. McCormack, Blood Kindred: The Politics of W. B. Yeats and his Death (London: Pimlico 2005), 224pp.

R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914 (OUP 1996), xxxi, 640pp., Do., pb. rep. (1998), 672pp.; R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats - A Life, II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939, 1914-1939 (Oxford: OUP 2003),xxiv, 797pp. [with index].

• John Unterecker, A Reader’s Guide to W. B. Yeats (NY: Noonday 1959).
• Jeffares, A Commentary on The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1968) [see rev. edn. 1984, infra].
• Sheelah Kirby, The Yeats Country (Dublin: Dolmen 1962; 2nd ed. 1965 [var. 1963]), ill. with drawings.
• James McGarry, ed., with intro. by Edward Malins, Place Names in the Writings of W. B. Yeats (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1976).
• Robin Skelton and Ann Saddlemyer, The World of W. B. Yeats (Dublin: Dolmen 1965).
• Mary Hanley, Thoor Ballylee: Home of William Butler Yeats (1965).
• Micheál MacLiammoir and Eavan Boland, W. B. Yeats and His World (London: Thames & Hudson 1971), 144pp. [Inde, p.142ff].
• Daniel A. Harris, Yeats, Coole Park and Ballylee (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1974).
• A. N. Jeffares, A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan; Stanford: California UP 1968), xxxii, 563pp., ill [maps; 23 cm.]; Do., with A. S. Knowland (London: Macmillan [1975]), xxi, 310pp.; and Do. [enl. & rev. edn.] A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1984), xxxix, 543pp. [Bibl. pxii-xiv; indices from p.522].
• Richard Taylor, A Reader’s Guide to the Plays of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1984).
• Suheil B. Bushrui & Tim Prentki, An International Companion to the Poetry of W. B. Yeats (Barnes & Noble Books 1990), 255pp.
• Ulick O’Connor, The Yeats Companion [anthol. of 50 poems], with a biographical portrait by Ulick O’Connor (London: Pavilion 1990; rep. Mandarin 1991), 223pp.
• Sam McCready, A W. B. Yeats Encyclopaedia (Conn: Greenwood 1997), 484pp.
• Lester I. Conner, A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats (Syracuse UP; Eurospan 1998), 224pp. [partially available at Google Books - online.]
• John Kelly [with Norman Page], A W. B. Yeats Chronology (London: Palgrave 2003), 392pp.
• Majorie Howes & John Kelly, eds., The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats (Cambridge UP 2006), 242 [4]pp. [see contents].
• David Holdeman, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to W.B. Yeats (NY Cambridge UP 2006), xii, 148pp. [see contents].
• W. B. Yeats: Works and Days (NLI 2006) [exhibition catalogue]
• Neil Mann, A Reader’s Guide to Yeats’s “A Vision” (Liverpool UP; Clemson UP 2019), 408pp. [see contents]

• C. K. Stead, The New Poetic (London; Hutchinson & Co. 1964).
• Richard Ellmann, Eminent Domain: Yeats Among Wilde, Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Auden (OUP 1967, rep. 1970), vii, 161pp.
• Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce (Oklahoma UP 1962, rep. 1992), xvi, 216pp., and Do. (Newton Abbot: David & Charles 1972), xi, 216pp.
• A. C. Patridge, The Language of Modern Poetry (London: André Deutsch 1976).
• Anthony Edward Dyson, Yeats Eliot and R. S. Thomas: Riding the Echo (London: Macmillan 1981), x, 339pp.
• Hazard Adams, Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic (Florida UP 1983).
• George Bornstein, Transformations in Romanticism in Yeats, Eliot and Stevens (Chicago UP 1976).
• Lucy McDiarmid, Saving Civilisation: Yeats, Eliot, and Auden Between the Wars (Cambridge UP 1984).
• Denis Donoghue, We Irish (Brighton: Harvester, 1986) [incl. Yeats, “Ancestral houses and Anglo-Ireland”, pp.52-66.].
• Christine Finn, Past Poetic Archaeology in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney (London: Duckworth 2004), 214pp.

• R. K. Alspach, ‘Some Sources of Yeats’s The Wanderings of Oisin’, in PMLA, 58 (Sept. 1943), pp.846-66.
• Allen Wade, ed., A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats [The Soho Bibliographies I] (London: Hart-Davis 1951), and Do. 1958); also 3rd edn. [rev. by Russell K. Alspach] (1968) [see infra].
• A. J. A. Symons, A Bibliography of 1st Edition Books of W. B. Yeats (First Edition Club 1924), 46pp.
• Stephen Maxfield Parrish, A Concordance to The Poems of W. B. Yeats,programmed by James Allan Painter (Cornell UP 1963), xxxvii, 967pp.
• Klaus Peter S. Jochum, ‘W. B. Yeats’s Plays: An Annotated Checklist of Criticism (Sarrbrüchem: Anglistisches Institut der Universität des Saarlandes 1966).
• Kenneth [Gustav Walter] Cross & R. T. Dunlop, Bibliography of Yeats Criticism 1887-1965, with a foreword by A. N. Jeffares (London: Macmillan 1971), 341pp.
• J. E. Stoll, The Great Deluge: A Yeats Bibliography (NY: Whitston Publ. Co. 1971).
• Eric Domville, A Concordance to the Plays of W. B. Yeats, 2 vols. (Cornell UP 1972), xix, 1558pp.
• K. P. S. Jochum, W. B. Yeats, Classified Bibliography of Criticism, including additions to Wade’s Bibliography and a Section on Irish Literary Theatre and Dramatic Revival (Urbana: Illinois UP 1978) [var. 1977], 801pp.
• Richard J. Finneran, ed., Recent Research on Anglo-Irish Writers (NY: MLA 1983).
• Edward O’Shea, A Descriptive Catalog of W. B. Yeats’s Library (NY: Garland Press 1985), xxiii, 390pp.
• Klaus Peter S. Jochum, W. B. Yeats: A Classified Bibliography of Criticism [2nd edn.] (Urbana: Illinois UP 1990) [with add. annual checklists in Finneran, ed., Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies from 1990 (Vol. 8)].
• Conrad A. Balliet, W. B. Yeats: A Census of the Manuscripts (NY: Garland Press 1990).
• Richard M. Kain, comp., ‘Yeats Bibliography’ [expanded by K. P. S. Jochum], in Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature [2nd edn.] (NJ: Greenwood Publ. 1996) [see copy - in RICORSO Library - via index or as attached.]
• Wayne K. Chapman, “Something that I Read in a Book”: W. B. Yeats’s Annotations at the National Library of Ireland, 2 vols. (Clemson UP 2022), Vol. 1: lxvi, 475pp; Vol. 2: lxvi, 235pp. [reviewed by Neil Mann in International Yeats Studies, 7:1 (Aug. 2023), pp.307-20; available at Clemson - Open online].

See also The Cornell Yeats - Manuscript Materials, under Works[supra]

• Edward O’Shea, A Descriptive Catalog of W. B. Yeats’s Library [Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 470] (NY: Garland Press 1985), xxiii, 390pp. [the books are now held in the National Library of Ireland under Cat. No. YL].
• Gerard Long, ‘The Library of W. B. Yeats’, Report of the Council of Trustees of the National Library of Ireland 2002, pp 56-59.
• National Library of Ireland, The Library of William Butler Yeats: Guide for Readers [infra: PDF format - 673KB].

Allen Wade, ed., A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats [The Soho Bibliographies I] (London: Hart-Davis 1951; rev. 1958); and Do., revised by R. K. Alspach [3rd Edn.] (London: Hart-Davis; NY: OUP 1968) 514pp. [contains three prefaces - Books by Yeats; Books and periodicals edited by Yeats; Books containing contributions by W. B. Yeats; contributions to periodicals; Translations into other languages; Japanese publications in English; appendices, Cuala Press (Dun Emer); some books about Yeats and his Work; Yeats and Broadcasting, by George Whalley; 4th edn. under preparation by Colin Smythe].

Bibliographical details

Robin Skelton & David R. Clark, eds., Irish Renaissance: A Gathering of Essays, Memoirs, and Letters from the Massachusetts Review (Dublin: Dolmen 1965). CONTENTS: Curtis Bradford, ed., Yeats, ‘Modern Ireland’ [an address to American Audiences 1932-33], pp.13-25; W. B. Yeats, The Shadowy Waters [MS Version], pp.26-55; Curtis Bradford, ed., ‘W. B. Yeats: Discoveries’ [2nd Series], pp.80-89. [... &c.]

Liam Miller, ed. & intro., The Dolmen Press Yeats Centenary Papers, MCMLXV[1965], with a preface by Jon Stallworthy (Dublin: Dolmen; London: OUP; Chester Springs, US: Dufour Edns. 1968), xvi, 523pp., ill., 24cm; comprising the 12 papers published separately by Dolmen Press March 1965-April 1968, now issued as a single-vol edn. of 850 copies signed by the editor. Preface by Jon Stallworthy [i-[xii]]; Introduction by Liam Miller [xiii-xvi]; Edward Malins, ‘Yeats and the Easter Rising’ [1]; Raymond Lister, ‘Beulah to Byzantium: A Study of Parellels in the Works of W. B. Yeats, William Blake, Samuel Palmer, and Edward Calvert’ [29]; Russell K. Alspach, ‘Yeats and Inisfree’ [69]; Giles W. L. Telfer, ‘Yeats’s Idea of the Gael’ [85]; Peter Faulkner, ‘Yeats and the Irish Eighteenth Century’ [109]; ‘Hiro Ishibashi [ed. Anthony Kerrigan], ‘Yeats and the Noh: Types of Japanese Beauty and their Reflection in Yeats’s Plays [125]; George Brandon Saul, ‘In ... Luminous Wind’ [197]; Curtis Bradford, ‘Yeats’s Last Poems Again’ [257]; George Mills Harper, ‘Yeats’s Quest for Eden’ [289]; John Unterecker ‘Yeats and Patrick McCartan, a Fenian Friendship: letters with a commentary, with address on “Yeats the Fenian” by Patrick McCartan’ [333]; Richard Ellmann, ‘Yeats and Joyce’ [445]; Edward Mallins, ‘Yeats and Music’ [481-509]; num. pls. and facs. ills.] Index, pp.509-23. 

See also 2nd Series: William Murphy, The Yeats Family and the Pollexfens of Sligo [New Yeats Papers No 1] (Dolmen Press 1971), 88pp., ills.; Richard J. Finneran, The Prose Fiction of W. B. Yeats (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1974), 44pp. Note: formerly iss. as Edward Malins, Yeats and Music [Dolmen Centenary Papers, XII] (Dublin: Dolmen 1965).

George Mills Harper, ed., Yeats and The Occult [Yeats Studies Series; gen. eds. Robert O’Driscoll & Lorna Reynolds] (London: Macmillan 1976), [ded. ‘In memory of T. R. Henn’]. CONTENTS: List of Illustrations [ix]; Note to the Reader [xi]; Acknowledgements [xiii]; Introduction [xv]; George Mills Harper, ‘Yeats’s Occult Papers’ [1]; William M. Murphy, ‘Psychic Daughter, Mystic Son, Sceptic Father’ [11]; James Olney, ‘The Esoteric Flower: Yeats and Jung’ [27]; William H[ugh] O’Donnell, ‘Yeats as Adept and Artist: The Speckled Bird, The Secret Rose, and The Wind among the Reeds’ [55]; Kathleen Raine, ‘Hades Wrapped in Cloud’ [80]; Arnold Goldman, ‘Yeats, Spiritualism, and Psychical Research’ [108]; George Mills Harper & John B. Kelly, ‘“Preliminary Examination of the Script of E[lizabeth] R[adcliffe]’ [130]; George Mills Harper, ‘“A Subject of Investigation”: Miracle at Mirebeau’ [172]; Richard J. Finneran & George Mills Harper, ‘“He loved strange thought”: W. B. Yeats and William Thomas Horton’ [190]; Walter Kelly Hood, ‘Michael Robartes: Two Occult Manuscripts’ [204]; Michael J. Sidnell, ‘Mr. Yeats, Michael Robartes, and Their Circle’ [225]; Warwick Gould, ‘“Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind”: Sources for Owen Aherne’ [255]; Laurence W. Fennelly, ‘W. B. Yeats and S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ [285]; Geoffrey N. Watkins, ‘Yeats and Mr. Watkins’ Bookshop’ [307]; Stuart Hirschberg, ‘‘An Encounter with the Supernatural in Yeats’s “The Spirit Medium”’ [311]; Richard J. Finneran, ‘A Preliminary Note on the Text of A Vision ( 1937)’ [317]; Contributors [321].

[ top ]

Deirdre Toomey, ed., Yeats Annual No. 9: ‘Yeats and Women’ (London: Macmillan 1997; 2nd Edn., Macmillan 1997), 448pp [0-333698-16-9]. CONTENTS: Contents: Acknowledgements vii; Notes on the Contributors, ix; Abbreviations, x; List of Plates xv; Introduction xvi; Deirdre Toomey, ‘Labyrinths: Yeats and Maud Gonne, [1]; Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘At the Feet of the Goddess: Yeats’s Love Poetry and the Feminist Occult, [41]; Warwick Gould, ‘“The Music of Heaven”: Dorothea Hunter, [73]; Deirdre Toomey, ‘“Away”,, [135]; James Pethica, ‘Patronage and Creative Exchange: Yeats, Lady Gregory and the Economy of Indebtedness, [168]; Pethica, ‘“Our Kathleen”: Yeats’s Collaboration with Lady Gregory in the Writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan’ [205]; Cullingford, ‘Yeats and Women: Michael Robartes and the Dancer, [223]; John Harwood, ‘“Secret Communion”: Yeats’s Sexual Destiny, [252]; &c. [Query: David Bradshaw, ‘the Eugenics Movement in the 1930s and the Emergence of On the Boiler’].

W. B. Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition, with a foreword by James White (National Gallery of Ireland 1965), 102pp., with indexes. CONTENTS: Chap. 1] Yeats the Man [ports. by Albert Power, J. B. Yeats, George Russell, W. Strang, Sean O’Sullivan, Augustus John [Yeats at Renvyle, June 1930], John Sargent, Edmund Dulac, and Max Beerbohm]. Chap. 2] The Heritage [ports. of Berkeley, Swift, Goldsmith, Grattan, Burke, Lover, Tone, Davis, Carleton with Robt. James and W. H. Maxwell, Emmet portrayed by Fred Donovan, Emmet, Ferguson, Curran, Mangan, Butt, O’Connell, Sheridan, Wordsworth, William O’Brien, O’Brien with Healy, Thom. Sexton, Dr Tanner and Justin McCarthy, Davitt, William Wilde, Allingham, Parnell, Standish [James] O’Grady, John Eglinton, Douglas Hyde, Swinburne, Redmond, Connolly, Stephen McKenna, McKenna with Lord Ashbourne and another, Henry Harrison, James Larkin, Rosa Butt, John Dillon, W. S. Blunt, Katharine Tynan, Count Plunkett, Oscar Wilde]. Chap. 3] Early Years [ports. other than family, incl. James Joyce, George Rusell, Alice Milligan, Horace Plunkett, Edward Dowden, Miss Hester Dowden, Hugh Lane, John O’Leary, John Todhunter, Mahaffy, Seamus O’Sullivan, Lord Dunsany, Oliver Sheppard, Lady Gregory, Eglinton, Robt. Gregory]. Chap. 4] The Family [incl. Dukes of Ormond, Pollexfens, Yeats (Mary, Lily and Lollie) and places]. Chap. 5] Pictures as Inspiration [includes Blake, Vecellio, Sargent, JB Yeats, Bernardo Strozzi, and Poussin]. CHAP. 6] Poet as Painter [3 items]. Chap. 7] Abbey Theatre [incl. Fays; the theatres; Miss Horniman; posters; Helen S. Laird (Mrs CP Curran), Lady Gregory, Synge, Edward Martyn, Geo. Moore, Geo. Russell, G. B. Shaw]. CHAP. 8] The Abbey Theatre, Playwrights [intro. refers to Harry Clarke Geneva Window contain ills. representative of Persse, Gregory, G. B. Shaw Seamus O’Sullivan [James Starkey], J. Stephens, O’Casey, Liam O’Flaherty, “AE” [George Russell], Lennox Robinson, Yeats, G. Fitzmaurice, P. Colum, Seamus O’Kelly, James Joyce and Synge; incl. O’Casey, Gogarty, Shaw, Robinson, T. C. Murray, Lecky, F R Higgins, Will. Fay, John F. Larchet]. Chap. 9] The Abbey Theatre, Actors [Barry Fitzgerald, Moira O’Neill, F. J. McCormack, Arthur Sinclair, Arthur Shields, J M Kerrigan, Maire Nic Shiubhliagh, Hugh Hunt, Sarah Allgood]. CHAP. 10] Public Life [incl. Austin Clarke, Mrs Pearse, Sarah Purser, Kevin O’Higgins, Hugh Lane, Joseph Holloway, Mrs R. I. Best, Maude Gonne MacBride, Casement, William T. Cosgrave, R. I. Best, Constance de Markievicz, Douglas Hyde, Eamon de Valera, Thomas Bodkin, James Stephens, Thomas MacGreevey, Denis Coffey, Iseult MacBride, Joseph O’Neill, Seán T O’Kelly, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Liam O’Flaherty, Seán O’Faolain, Joseph Hone, Denis Johnston, Lawrence of Arabia [with corrig. slip], Susan Mitchell, Herbert Hamilton Harty, Patrick Kavanagh]. Index of Lenders; Index of Persons Portrayed; Index of Artists. See also Exhibition Catalogue, W. B. Yeats, Images of a Poet. My Permanent and Impermanent Images [Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery] (Man UP and Irish Arts Council 1961).

A. N[orman] Jeffares, ed., Yeats, Sligo and Ireland: Essays to Mark the 21st Yeats Summer School [Irish Literary Studies 6] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), 267pp., essays by Lester I Connor; Denis Donoghue [‘Romantic Ireland’]; Barbara Hardy [‘Wildness of Crazy Jane’]; Seamus Heaney [‘Yeats as an Example?’], pp.56-72; T. R. Henn; John Holloway; Jeffares [‘Yeats and the Wrong Lever’]; Brendan Kennelly [‘The Visitor’, poem]; F. S. L. Lyons [‘Yeats and Victorian Ireland’]; Maurice Harmon [‘Hounds Voices were They All, Experiment in Yeats Criticism’]; D. E. S. Maxwell; William M. Murphy [‘Home Life among the Yeatses’]; Patrick Rafroidi [‘Yeats, Nature and the Self’]; Ann Saddlemeyer [‘The dwarf Dramas of the Early Abbey Theatre’]; Helen Vendler [‘Four Elegies’]; John S. Kelly [‘Yeats’s Relation to his Early Publishers’]; also notes on contribs., and list of speakers at Sligo, 1960-80.

[ top ]

Catherine Fahy, W. B. Yeats and His Circle (National Library of Ireland 1989), 63pp. 1. Yeats and Pollexfen; 2. First Lover and Mentors [incl. Dowden and Eglinton]; 3. The Contemporary Club [incl. Sigerson, C. H. Oldham, and J. F. Taylor]; 4. John O’Leary; 5. Katharine Tynan [incl. Matthew Russell and Whit[e]hall, Clondalkin]; 6. Maud Gonne; Irish Literary Societies [Fahy, O’Donoghue, Gavan Duffy]; Republican Activities [Mark Ryan; F. H. O’Donnell]; 9. Hermeticists, Theosophists, and the Golden Dawn [incl. Charles Johnston, Chatterji, Blavatsky, ‘AE’ George Russell, and Moina Mathers, sis. of Henri Bergson, and wife of MacGregor M., William Sharp, George Pollexfen, Florence Farr, et al. and castle of heroes on Castle Rock, Lough Key, nr. Boyle, Co. Roscommon]; 10. London Friends [Morris, Henley, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, John Todhunter, Edward Dowson, Ernest Rhys, et al.]; 11. Lady Gregory and Coole [mostly of Yeats]; 12. The Dramatic Movement [Florence Farr; Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory, George Moore, Máire Ni Shuibhlaigh, William and Frank Fay; with scenes from plays incl. Maud Gonne in title role of Cathleen Ni Houlihan]; 13. The Yeats Family in the USA [incl. John Quinn and Lollie Yeats]; 14. The Established Poet [incl. Countess Markievicz, John MacBride, Hugh Lane, Georgie Hyde-Lees, and Iseult Gonne from pastel by her mother]; 15. The Married Poet [Yeats as Giraldus, the supposed author of A Vision; Lady Ottoline Morrell]; 16. The Sixty Year Old Smiling Public Man [incl. group of memorial committee to T. W. Lyster at National Library, with R. L. Praeger, R. I. Best, George Atkinson, et al.; also Frank O’Connor, young Francis Stuart, F. R. Higgins with Lennox Robinson, Lord Dunsany]; 17. Last Years [Dorothy Wellesley, Shri Purohit Swami; Margot Rudduck; Yeats broadcasting (3 July) 1937, and his grave].

Shirley Neuman, Some One Myth: Yeats’s Autobiographical Prose [New Yeats Papers XIX] (Dolmen Press 1982) [cover design by Sturge Moore for the 1916 edn. of Reveries Over Childhood], 160pp., with appendix & notes. Contents, 1. Personal Utterance and The Lunar Parable, Early Prose and A Vision; 2. Reveries &c.; 3. The Trembling of the Veil; 4. Dramatis Personae; 5. Estrangement and The Death of Synge; 6. The Bounty of Sweden; 7. On the Boiler.

[ top ]

Peter Alderson Smith, W. B. Yeats and the Tribes of Danu [Irish Lit. Studies, 27] (Gerrards Cross; Colin Smyth 1987), 350pp. - a study of the Irish fairy faith in its ancient and traditional forms, and of Yeats’s response to that faith. The first part concerns the ancient beliefs, chiefly as they are expressed in mythology, and describes the origins and characteristics of the Tuatha De Danann. Peter Alderson Smith shows how they are a folk memory of an ancient people who have to some degree acquired divine and ghostly characteristics. Part two describes the fairies of modern folklore, the various types, their characteristics, and differences from ghosts, in being a separate and supernatural race of people, homogeneous but unpredictable and notorious for their capriciousness. Part three finds in Yeats's work between the writing of The Countess Cathleen (1891-92) and the poems of Responsibilities (1914) a desire to know more about the Otherworld that resulted in a relationship that fluctuated between the poles of frustration and despair on the one hand, and morbid enthusiasm on the other. That the process was ultimately therapeutic is shown by Yeats’s move away from the Celtic Twilight to the poems of his maturity. (Publisher’s notice - available online].

Leonard Orr, Yeats and Postmodernism (Syracuse UP 1991), pp.35-63. CONTENTS: Acknowledgments’ [vii]; 1. Leonard Orr, Introduction: ‘Yeats and Poststructuralist Criticism’ [1]; Ronald Schleifer, ‘Yeats’s Postmodern Rhetoric’ [16]; William Bonney, ‘He “Liked The Way His Finger Smelt”: Years and the Tropics of History’ [35; text]; Kieran Quinlan, ‘Under Northern Lights: Re-visioning Yeats and the Revival’’ [64]; William Johnsen, ‘Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”’ [80]; Kathleen O’Gorman, ‘The Performativity of Utterance in Deirdre and The Player Queen’ [90]; Steven Putzel, ‘Poetic Ritual and Audience Response Yeats and the No’ [105]; Kitti Carriker, ‘The Doll as Icon: The Semiotics of the Subject in Yeats’s Poem “The Dolls ”’ [126]; Cheryl Herr, ‘“The Strange Reward of All That Discipline”: Yeats and Foucault’ [146]; R. B. Kershner, ‘Yeats/Bakhtin/Orality/Dyslexia’ [167]. Selective Bibliography [191]; Notes on Contributors [195]; Index [197].

Edward Larrissy, Yeats the Poet: The Measures of Difference (London [Brighton] & NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994), xii, 226pp. CONTENTS: Introduction - Matter and Methodology. The Matrix - Matrix and Mean; The Happy Shell and the Sad Shell; Husks, Wandering and the Nation; Rose, Mirror and Hem; Fin-de-siècle Fenianism - The Wind Among the Reeds. The Measure - The Masks of Difference; Framing Ireland; Reflections on Yeatsian Occultism. Cracked Masonry - Walls of The Tower; Profane Perfection. [Summary - This work addresses Yeats’s “antinomies”, seeing their origin and structure in his divided Anglo-Irish inheritance and examining the notion of measure. It then explores how this relates to freemasonry, Celticism and Orientalism and looks at the Blakean esoteric language of contrariety and outline which provided Yeats with the vocabulary of self-understanding: COPAC.]

Jonathan Allison, ed., Yeat’s Political Identities: Selected Essays (Michigan UP 1996), 352pp. CONTENTS: Acknowledgments [ix]; Allison, Introduction: ‘Fascism, Nationalism, Reception’ [1]. PART 1: Yeats and Fascism. Conor Cruise O’Brien, [excerpt from] ‘Passion and Cunning: An Essay on the Politics of W. B. Yeats’ [29]; Conor Cruise O’Brien, [excerpt from] Introduction to Passion and Cunning and Other Essays [57]; Elizabeth Cullingford, ‘From Democracy to Authority’ [61]. PART 2: Yeats and the Ascendancy. R. F. Foster, ‘Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History’ [83]; Marjorie Howes, ‘Family Values: Gender, Sexuality, and Crisis in Yeats’s Anglo-Irish Aristocracy’ [107]. PART 3. Nationalism and Revolution. Seamus Deane, ‘Yeats and the Idea of Revolution’ [133]; Declan Kiberd, ‘Inventing Irelands’ [145]; Richard Kearney, [from] ‘Myth and Terror’ [165]; David Lloyd, [from] ‘The Poetics of Politics: Yeats and the Founding of the State’ [181]; Edna Longley, ‘Helicon and ni Houlihan: Michael Robartes and the Dancer’ [203]; Maurice Harmon, ‘Yeats, Austin Clarke and Seán O’Faoláin’ [221]; George Bornstein, ‘Romancing the (Native) Stone: Yeats, Stevens, and the Anglocentric Canon’ [235]. PART 4. [q .sect. title] Seamus Heaney, ‘Some Responses: In the Midst of the Force Field’ [257]; Augustine Martin, ‘What Stalked through the Post Office?’ [reply to Seamus Deane] [261]; Terence Brown, ‘Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Critical Debate’ [279]; David Krause, The De-Yeatsification Cabal’ [293]; Hazard Adams, Yeats and Antithetical Nationalism’ [309]; Ronald Bush, ‘The Modernist under Siege’ [325]. Select Annotated Bibliography [335]; Contributors’ [349].

Daniel Albright, Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism (Cambridge UP 1997), x, 307pp. [24 cm]; CONTENTS: List of illustrations; Notes on references; Introduction; Part I. Yeats’s Waves: 1. Yeats’s figures as reflections in water; 2. Yeats and the avant-garde; 3. The theme of homunculus: Yeats and Wyndham Lewis; 4. Yeats and the sublime; Part II. Pound’s Particles: 5. Minima (elementary particles of modernist poetry); 6. Symbol (Yeats’s precursor to Pound’s image); 7. The decay of symbols; 8. Things in themselves (Pound’s anti-allegorism); 9. Image (Kandinsky, Brancusi, Tchelitchew); 10. Units of rhythm (Antheil); 11. Ideogram; 12. Vortex; 13. The decay of vortices; 14. The null set (Hugh Selwyn Mauberley); Part III. Eliot’s Waves: 15. Monadological metaphors in Eliot’s early work; 16. Narratives tied in knots; 17. Christ-particles in Eliot’s late work (relief form the waves); Bibliography [pp.288-94]; Index.

[ top ]

Margaret Mills Harper, Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats (Oxford: OUP 2006), xii, 382pp. CONTENTS: List of Illustrations [xxiv]; List of Abbreviations and Signs [xxv] Introduction: ‘She finds the words’ [1] 1. ‘A philosophy ... created from search’: Preliminary Issues [28] First Interlude. Double Visions: Two Manuscripts and Two Books [72]; 2. Nemo the Interpreter 94 Second Interlude. Automatic Performance: Technology and Occultism [151] 3. ‘To give you new images’: Published Results [183] 4. Demon the Medium [238] 5. All the Others: Dramatis Personae [294] Conclusion: ‘this other Aquinas’ [337]; Bibliography [344]; Index [364]. (See extracts, infra.)

Majorie Howes & John Kelly, eds., The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats (Cambridge UP 2006), xvi, 242 [4]pp. [Selected Bibliography & Index, p.226ff.] CONTENTS: Notes on contributors [vii]; Chronology of Yeats’s life [x]; List of abbreviations [xv]; 1. Marjorie Howes, Introduction [1]; 2. George Bornstein, ‘Yeats and Romanticism’ [19]; 3. George Watson, ‘Yeats, Victorianism, and the 1890s’ [36]; 4. Daniel Albright, ‘Yeats and Modernism’ [59]; 5. Helen Vendler, ‘The later poetry’ [77]; 6. Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Yeats and the drama’ [101]; 7. Declan Kiberd, ‘Yeats and criticism’ [115]; 8. James Pethica, ‘Yeats, folklore, and Irish legend’ [129]; 9. Margaret Mills Harper, ‘Yeats and the Occult’ [144]; 10. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘Yeats and gender’ [167]; 11. Jonathan Allison, ‘Yeats and politics’ [185]; 12. Howes, ‘Yeats and the postcolonial [206]; Select bibliography [226]; Index [232]

David Holdeman, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to W.B. Yeats (Cambridge UP 2006), xii, 148pp. CONTENTS: Preface; Acknowledgments; Abbreviations. Chapter 1: Early Yeats - Childhood - Early religious and political views - Crossways - Maud Gonne, gender, and The Countess Cathleen - The Rose - The Secret Rose and The Wind Among the Reeds - The fading of the Rose. Chapter 2: Middle Yeats - The Irish National Theatre - Early plays: Cathleen ni Houlihan, On Baile’s Strand, and The King’s Threshold - Drama’s influence on Yeats’s verse style: In the Seven Woods - Revisions, masks, and The Green Helmet and Other Poems - Responsibilities - Ireland’s “Troubles”. Chapter 3: Late Yeats - Lunar visions: The Wild Swans at Coole - Four Plays for Dancers and Michael Robartes and the Dancer - The Tower - The Winding Stair and Other Poems - Blueshirts, eugenics, “lust and rage”: Yeats’s final works - Death. Chapter 4: Yeats’s critics - Bibliographies, scholarly editions, and biographies - Critical studies. Notes; Guide to further reading; Index.

Neil Mann, A Reader’s Guide to Yeats’s “A Vision” (Liverpool UP, Clemson UP 2019), pp.408. CONTENTS: Foreword (vii-x); Acknowledgments; (xi-ii); List of Figures (xiii-vi); List of Tables (xvii-iii); List of Abbreviations (xix-xxiv); Policy on References and Style (xxv-vi); Chap. 1: Overview: The Book of A Vision (3-24); Chap. 2: Genesis: Making and Remaking A Vision (25-36); Chap.4: Background - Antecedents and Assumptions (37-52); Chap. 4: Presentation - Gyres and Geometry (53-78); Chap. 5: Spirits - Determinism and Free Will (79-88); Chap. 6: Being - Human and Divine (89-108); Chap. 7: The Faculties - Action and Pursuit (111-36); Chap. 8: The Principles - Reality and Value (137-52); Chap. 9: The Daimon: Opposition and Essence (153-72); Chap. 10: The Divine - One and Many (173-84); Chap. 11: The Circles of Life - Wheels and Rebirth (187-206); Chap. 12: The Twenty-Eight Incarnations - Lives and Phases (207-42); Chap. 13: After Life - Understanding and Preparation ( 243-66); Chap. 14: History - Cycles and Influx (267-92); Chap. 15: Reframing ‘A Vision’ (295-302). Contents available at JSTOR - online; accessed 18.11.2024];

Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Harvard UP 2007), 428pp. CONTENTS [chaps.]: Lyric form in Yeats’s poetry: Prophecy, love, and revolution; Antechamber and afterlife: Byzantium and the Delphic Oracle; The puzzle of sequence: Two political poems; “Magical” techniques in the early poems; Tales, feelings, farewells: Three stages of the Yeatsian Ballad; Troubling the tradition: Yeats at sonnets; The nationalist measure: Trimeter-quatrain poems; Marches and the examination of conscience: The tetrameter line; The medium of instruction: Doctrine in blank verse; The renaissance aura: Ottava Rima poems; The spacious lyric : Long stanzas, irregular lines; Primitivism and the grotesque: “Supernatural songs”; Rare forms.

[ top ]

Ronald Schuchard, The Last Minstrels: W. B. Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts (Oxford: OUP 2008), xxvi, 447pp., ill. [24pp.of pls.] [Contents: Bardic forefathers; London minstrels; Dublin minstrels; Minstrels and masquers; Dancers and choruses; A spiritual democracy; Minstrel abroad; “As regarding rhythm”: minstrels and imagists; Minstrels and moderns; The last minstrel.] An Illustrated Edition was issued in 2011 (500pp.)

David Holdeman & Ben Levitas, ed., W. B. Yeats in Context (Cambridge UP 2010), xix, 439pp. CONTENTS: Introduction David Holdeman and Ben Levitas; Part I: Times: 1. W. J. McCormack, ‘Church, state, childhood, and youth, 1865-1885’; 2. Stephen Regan, ‘The fin de siecle, 1885-1897’; 3. Adrian Frazier, ‘Anger management, 1898-1913’; 4. Ben Levitas, ‘War, 1914-1923’; 5. Paul Scott Stanfield, ‘The Irish Free State and the European crisis, 1924-1939’. Part II: Places: 6. David Fitzpatrick, ‘Sligo’; 7. Timothy Webb, ‘London’; 8. Anthony Roche, ‘Dublin’; 9. Jonathan Allison, ‘Galway: Coole and Ballylee’; Part III: Personalities: 10. Douglas Archibald, ‘John Butler Yeats’; 11. Karen Steele. ‘Maud Gonne’; 12. Judith Hill, ‘Lady Gregory’; 13. Nicholas Grene, ‘J. M. Synge’; 14. Catherine E. Paul, ‘Ezra Pound’; 15. Margaret Mills Harper, ‘George Yeats’. Part IV: Themes: 16. Donald J. Childs, ‘Class and Eugenics’; 17. David Lloyd, ‘Nationalism and Postcolonialism’; 18. Vicki Mahaffey, ‘Gender’; 19. James Pethica, ‘Aesthetics’; 20. R. F. Foster, ‘Fascism’; Part V: Philosophies: 21. Nicholas Allen, ‘The Church in Ireland: Protestant and Catholic’; 22. Timothy Materer, ‘Occultism’; 23. Sinead Garrigan Mattar, ‘Folklore’; 24. Shalini Sikka, ‘Indian Thought’; 25. Michael Valdez Moses, ‘Nietzsche’; 26. Matthew Gibson, ‘Classical Philosophy’; 27. Jefferson Holdridge, ‘Landscape, Family, Eighteenth-century Ireland’; Part VI: Arts: 28. Phillip L. Marcus, ‘Nineteenth-century Irish poetry’; 29. Matthew Campbell, ‘The English Romantic Symbolists’; 30. James Longenbach, ‘Modern Poetry’; 31. Richard Cave, ‘Theatrical culture’; 32. Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, ‘The Visual Arts’; 33. Frank Shovlin, ‘Modern Fiction’; Part VII. Reception: 34. David Holdeman, ‘Manuscripts and Revisions’; 35. George Bornstein, ‘Publishers and the Material Text’; 36. Edna Longley, ‘Critical Debate, 1939-1970’; 37. Rob Doggett, ‘Critical debate, 1970-2006’; 38. Geraldine Higgins, ‘Popular culture’; Guide to Further Reading; Index.

R. F. Foster, Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritance (Oxford: OUP [2011]) xix, 236pp., ill. [National tales and national futures in Ireland and Scotland after 1800; The first Romantics: young Irelands between Catholic emancipation and the famine; Lost in the big house: Anglo-Irishry and the uses of the supernatural; Oisin comes home: Yeats as inheritor.]

Edna Longley, Yeats and Modern Poetry (Cambridge UP 2013), 268pp. CHAPS: Ireland as Audience: "To write for my own race"; Yeats and American modernism; Intricate trees: The survival of symbolism; "Monstrous familiar images": Poetry and War 1914-1923 -- Yeats’s other island. (Available online 2014]]

Matthew Gibson & Neil Mann, Yeats, Philosophy and the Occult (Liverpool UP 2016), 237pp. CONTENTS: Introduction; 1. Wayne K. Chapman, ‘“Something Intended, Complete”: Major Work on Yeats Past, Present, and Yet to Come’; 2. Katherine Ebury, ‘Ghost, Medium, Criminal, Genius: Lombrosian Types in Yeats’s Art and Philosophy’; 3. Charles I. Armstrong, ‘“Born Anew”: W. B. Yeats’s “Eastern” Turn in the 1930s’ 4. Neil Mann, ‘W. B. Yeats, Dream, Vision, and the Dead’; 5. Matthew Gibson, ‘Yeats, the Great Year, and Pierre Duhem’; 6. Graham A. Dampier, ‘The Morphological Interaction of the Four Faculties in the Historical System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision’; 7. Colin McDowell, ‘Yeats and Abstraction: From Berkeley to Zen’; Appendices: I. Annotations in the Writings of Walter Savage Landor in the Yeatses’ Library; II. Yeats’s Notes on Leo Frobenius’s The Voice of Africa (1913)

Yeats Annual 20: Lectures in Honour of Eamon Cantwell [University College Cork/ESB International Annual W. B. Yeats Lectures Ser.] (2003-2008), with Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, John Kelly, Paul Muldoon, Bernard O’Donoghue, Helen Vendler. [formerly issued as pamphlets] donor of books to the Boole Library, NUI Cork, here catalogued by Crónán Ó Doibhlin; incls. 56 pls of artists’ designs and first editions with the continuation of Colin Smythe’s census of surviving copies of Yeats’s earliest separate publication Mosada (1886) and a piece by Warwick Gould on that poem’s source in the legend of the Phantom Ship; also John Kelly on Yeats’s ghost-writing for Sarah Allgood; Geert Lernout on the source of Yeats’s ‘Tulka’; Günther Schmigalle on connections with American communist colonies; Deirdre Toomey editing new letters to the French anarchist, Auguste Hamon and reviews by Colin McDowell (A Vision, and Yeats, Hone and Berkeley); shorter reviews of current studies by Michael Edwards, Jad Adams, and Deirdre Toomey; obit. of Jon Stallworthy (by Nicolas Barker) and Katharine Worth (by Richard Cave).