Author Description

This volume covers a tumultuous period in Yeats's public and personal life, beginning with the acrimonious collapse of Maud Gonne's marriage to Major MacBride (who not only accused Yeats of being her lover but also threatened to shoot him), and encompassing the fiery disputes in the Abbey Theatre as it changed from an amateur society into a professional company. Through all this, we see Yeats maturing as an artist: writing and revising poems and plays, and preparing an eight-volume Collected Works through which he hoped to define his artistic personality. The letters not only record an energetic and bruising period, but also bear witness to Yeats's indomitable fighting spirit and artistic integrity.