He was one of Ireland's greatest poets. Yeats once said, "Out of the quarrel with others, we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves poetry." When he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, he was recognized "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
1. Yeats's Ghosts
by Brenda Maddox. HarperPerennial. Whatever ghosts once haunted Yeats--both real or imagined--he was able to learn from them to create those elusive words that have lasted. Yeats once said, "Out of the quarrel with others, we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves poetry." Read more about this book...
2. Yeats: The Man and the Masks
by Richard Ellmann. W.W. Norton & Company. From the publisher: "The most influential poet of his age, Yeats eluded the grasp of many who sought to explain him. In this classic critical examination of the poet, Richard Ellmann strips away the masks of his subject: occultist, senator of the Irish Free State, libidinous old man, and Nobel Prize winner."
3. The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography
by Terence Brown. Blackwell Publishers. Besides detailing the life of a great poet in this literary biography, Brown offers insight into the poetry and other works of William Butler Yeats.4. W. B. Yeats: A Literary Life
by Alasdair D. MacRae. St. Martin's Press. From the publisher: "Each chapter of Alasdair Macrae's study of the writer seeks to locate him in relation to the main movements and ideas which influenced his work and to which he responded in a unique way."5. Yeats and Women
by Deirdre Toomey. St. Martin's Press. Toomey has revised and enlarged the text with this edition, including eight essays that discuss Yeats and his relationship with women. The book includes: "Yeats and Maud Gonne," "At the Feet of the Goddess: Yeats's Love Poetry and the Feminist Occult," "Dorothea Hunter," "Yeats and Women: Michael Robartes and the Dancer," and much more.6. The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893-1938
by Anna MacBride White, A. Norman Jeffares (Editor). Syracuse Univ Press. Irish nationalist Maud Gonne was the love of Yeats's life. This collection presents letters from their long affair.7. The Book of Yeats's Vision
by Hazard Adams. University of Michigan Press. From the publisher: "Adams argues that the book is of extraordinary interest for its literary merit, its place in intellectual history as an example of romanticism's persistence in modernism, and its oblique defense of poetic fiction-making."8. Yeats
by Harold Bloom. Oxford University Press. In his "Introduction," Bloom writes, "ONe purpose of the analysies of Yeats's poems and plays offered by this volume is to suggest a newer kind of practical criticism, one which results directly from an awareness of each poet's own relation to his precursors."9. Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives
by William Michael Murphy. Syracuse University Press. From the publisher: "Drawing on correspondence and an extensive number of unpublished letters and materials not hitherto available and more than one hundred photographs and illustrations (many never before published), 'Family Secrets' explores a gallery of characters not often found within the confines of a single family."10. Pressed against Divinity: W B Yeats's Feminine Masks
by Janis Tedesco Haswell. Northern Illinois University Press. Haswell traces the development of Yeats's "feminine masks" in his plays, poetry, and other works. According to the publisher: "The ramifications of double-voiced verse reach beyond literary theory to gender and women's studies, philosophy, and psychology."