W. B. Yeats W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as a Senator of the Irish Free State for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when
Irish Literary Revival Yeats, Lady Gregory, Moore, Martyn, Padraic Colum, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, Thomas MacDonagh, Lord Dunsany, T. C. Murray, James Cousins and Lennox Robinson. In 1904 John Eglinton started the journal "Dana", to which Fred Ryan and Oliver St John Gogarty contributed. In 1906 the publishing house of Maunsel and Company was founded by Stephen Gwynn, Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts to publish Irish writers. Its first publication was "Rush-light" by Joseph Campbell. Lady Gregory started publishing her collection of Kiltartan stories, including "A Book of Saints and Wonders" (1906) and "The Kiltartan History