Yeats 150: William Butler Yeats 1865-1939

YEATS 150 is a collection of essays, many of them illustrated, commemorating the life and work of Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). The book, dedicated to Seamus Heaney, is divided into a number of sections: Academic Essays; Plays; the Yeats family; Scholarly Essays; Yeats Poetry Prizes and, appropriately, the topographical ‘Sligo’, by Sligo natives and visitors to the International Yeats Summer School. The book includes Helen Vendler’s tribute to Seamus Heaney; essays on Yeats’ poetry and plays; on his wife George, his children Anne and Michael, his contemporary, AE, and on the Sligo landscape that so influenced his imagination. It also details his elaborately crafted book designs. A section, appropriately titled Tir na nOg, includes pieces by the late T.R. Henn, Vincent Buckley and Alec King, connecting to the post-1945 writing on W.B. Yeats. This remarkably wide-ranging collection honours the poet Yeats and those who have lectured and tutored across the world on the man and his work. The US, Canada, UK, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand and Australia are represented in the essays. The thirty-six contributors include former Yeats Summer School Directors: Helen Vendler, Denis Donoghue and James Pethica, Ann Margaret Daniels, as well as Patrick M. Keane, Harvard professors Deirdre Toomey and Daniel Albright, Yeats Annual editor Warwick Gould, publisher Colin Smythe, professor and director of Otago University, New Zealand, Peter Kuch, Tokyo professor Tomoko Iwatsubo, biographer Ann Saddlemyer, critics Lucy McDiarmid, Bruce Stewart and Martin Mansergh: in all, a glittering gathering of writers lend weight to this important commemorative and historical work.