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
Palgrave's Golden Treasury Robert Bridges – Gerard Manley Hopkins – Andrew Lang – A. W. E. O’Shaughnessy – R. L. Stevenson – John Davidson – A. E. Housman – Francis Thompson – Mary E. Coleridge – Rudyard Kipling – W. B. Yeats – Ernest Dowson – Lionel Johnson – Laurence Binyon – Edwin Arlington Robinson – Hilaire Belloc – T. Sturge Moore – W. H. Davies – Ralph Hodgson – Walter de la Mare – G. K. Chesterton – Robert Frost – John Masefield – Edward Thomas – Harold Monro – Padraic Colum – James Stephens – James Elroy Flecker – D. H.