A W.B. Yeats Chronology

W. B. Yeats, one of the greatest poets who wrote in English, was also a playwright, theatre director, essayist, Senator of the Irish Free State, and lifelong occultist. He knew almost every important figure in the cultural and public life of his time, including Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Herbert Asquith, Ezra Pound, Sean O'Casey and Eamon de Valera. In tracing these connections, and in recording his public controversies and private concerns, as well as providing details of his hundreds of books, plays, reviews and essays, this Chronology bears vivid witness to a life which is not only of major literary and cultural importance, but also offers important insights into contemporary political, intellectual and social networks. T. S. Eliot observed that Yeats was 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time' and this Chronology indicates just how implicated he was in that history.

John Kelly is Professor of English at Oxford University.