This website is dedicated to William B. Yeats and is intended to introduce his life and work.
On this website, you may find a brief chronology, some commented and illustrated Yeats' poems.
Links to other websites are also presented for any further investigations on Yeats.
June 13, 1865
Birth of William Butler Yeats in Dublin. He was the son of John B. Yeats,
a barrister who turned into a painter, and of Susan Pollexfen.
Susan was from a successful Sligo ship-owners and mill-owners family.
1867
Yeats family moved to London
1880
Yeats family moved back to Dublin.
1881-1883
He attended the Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin.
1884-1886
He attended the Metropolitan School of Art (now known as the National College of Art and Design of Ireland)
in Kildare Street.
1885
Yeats' first poems were published in the Dublin University Review.
He formed with his friends: the Dublin Hermetic Order.
Throughout his life he had a particuliar interest in occultism,
esotirism and magical experiments.
1887
Yeats family went back to London, because of John Butler Yeats who had failed to
prosper as a painter in Dublin.
1889
Publication of The Wanderings of Oisin and other Poems which was well received by the public.
He met Maud Gonne. Yeats fell desperately in love with her but his love was never returned.
His feelings were going to inspire some of his most famous poems.
1896
He met lady Gregory. They were close friends till Lady Gregory's death in 1932.
She encouraged Yeats' work.
1899
Yeats, Lady Gregory, Martyn and George Moore founded the Irish Literary Theater
(later became the Abbey theater). This theater was intended to play Irish subjects for an Irish audience.
1903-1904
Lecture tour in America.
1913
He met Ezra Pound, an American poet.
1917
He married Georgie Hyde-Lee who was 27 years younger than him.
She shared Yeats' passion for the occult.
He bought Ballylee Castle, near Coole Park, and promptly renamed it Thoor Ballylee.
1922
Yeats was appointed Senator (he chaired the coinage committee that was charged with
selecting a set of designs for the very first coinage of the Irish Free State
(...and the costumes of Irish judges!)
1923
He was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature.
1928
He retired from the Senate due to illness.
1929
He stayed at Thoor Ballylee for the last time
(much of the remainder of his life was outside Ireland)
1939,28 January
He died at the Hotel Ideal Séjour, Menton, France aged 73
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