William Butler Yeats Biography

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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the leading and greatest figures of the 20th century literature. Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent most his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth and was interested and fascinated by the Irish legends and the occult, which feature in the first phase of his work. His father, John Yeats studied art in London and his mother came from a wealthy family which owned a milling and shipping business. One of his greatest works includes “The Tower” and “Other Poems”. Early Life: Yeats was born in Dublin in the year 1865. He stayed with his family in Slingo, which was the area of his childhood and spiritual home. Its landscape became later symbolically and literally his “country of the heart”. The Butler Yeats family was highly artistic: his brother was a respected painter, while his Sisters were involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1867, the family moved to England so that his father could further his artistic career. The family returned to Dublin in 1880, due to financial reasons. William spent a great deal of time at his father’s studio and there he met many of the city’s artists and writers. It was during this period that he started writing poetry and in 1885 Yeats first poems were published. His first known works were written when he was seventeen. His early works were conventional. He soon turned to Irish mythology and folklore and the writings of William Blake. Young poet: In 1890 Yeats co-founded a Club where a group of London based poets would met regularly. Yeats had a life-long interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. Yeats wrote “The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” His mystical fascination, also inspired by a study of Hinduism and the occult developed a great deal of the basis of his

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