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
Mary Devenport O'Neill Colum, W. B. Yeats, Richard Irvine Best, Frank O'Connor, Francis Stuart and Iseult Gonne. She became particularly close to Yeats, who she confided in. Yeats' recorded their weekly consultations in his diary while O'Neill was writing "A vision" (1925). In his "Oxford anthology of English verse" from 1936, he included one of O'Neill's poems. In 1917, she contributed lyrics to her husband's play "The kingdom maker". She published her only book in 1929, "Prometheus and other poems". After this she occasionally contributed primarily modernist plays and poetry to "The Dublin Magazine", "The Irish Times" and "The Bell". O'Neill collaborated with