Author Description

Vividly entertaining and entirely unselfconscious, these early letters of W.B. Yeats reveal the sensibility of a great literary figure. This first volume of Yeats's correspondence contains 350 letters covering the first thirty years of his life, a creative period that saw the publication of his first three books of verse, the first performance of his plays, the beginning of his relationship with Maud Gonne,,and his increasing involvement with the Irish nationalist movement. The annotation is lively and detailed and gives the full literary, social, and historical context of the letters. Also included are an introduction, a detailed chronology of the whole of Yeats's life, and a biographical appendix on his principal correspondents and others mentioned in the letters.