From Publishers Weekly
The explosive era in both Irish history and Yeats's poetry justify the length of the second volume of Oxford historian Foster's masterful life of Yeats. Again Foster approaches Yeats's memoirs with skepticism, shrewdly and scrupulously applying the historical facts to Yeats's self-made image and his poetry. The result adds a unique, superb perspective on Yeats's poetic treatment of the Easter Uprising and subsequent civil war, his eventual disenchantment with the new Irish Free State and the restless philosophical questing of his last years, up to his death just before Ireland's break from Great Britain in WWII. Following Responsibilities in 1914, Yeats had hoped to start a domestic phase in his life with his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees and his homesteader purchase of Ballylee castle. Instead, this time of upheaval saw him apotheosize two martyrs, Maude Gonne's husband in "Easter 1916," and Great War casualty Robert Gregory, in "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death." Foster's consummate treatment of the Irish Free State's violent birth further illuminates Yeats's best work in The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower with a vividness rarely found in biography. More personal matters, such as automatic-writing seances with his wife and his theosophical treatise The Vision, are of less interest to the historian-biographer than Yeats's public figure, including his battles with Catholic censorship and his dubious but brief association with the "Blueshirt" fascist faction. Even as history caught up with and overtook the Free State senator and Nobel laureate, Foster splendidly rounds out the Celtic Twilight bard's inner revolution in his magnificent twilight years. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
The first volume in Roy Foster's magisterial biography of W.B. Yeats was hailed as 'a work of huge significance' (The Atlantic Monthly) and 'a stupendous historiographical feat' (Irish Sunday Independent). Now, the eagerly awaited second volume explores the complex poetic, political, and personal intricacies of Yeats's dramatic final decades, a period that saw the Easter Rebellion, the founding of the Irish state in 1922, and the production of Yeats's greatest masterpieces. In the conclusion of this first fully authorized biography, Foster brilliantly illuminates the circumstances--the rich internal and external experiences--that shaped the great poetry of Yeats's later years: 'The Wild Swans at Coole,' 'Sailing to Byzantium,' 'The Tower,' 'The Circus Animals Desertion,' 'Under Ben Bulben,' and many others. Yeats's pursuit of Irish nationalism and an independent Irish culture, his continued search for supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, a series of tempestuous love affairs, and his lingering obsession with Maud Gonne are all explored here with a nuance and awareness rare in literary biography. Foster gives us the very texture of Yeats's life and thought, revealing the many ways he made poetry out of the 'quarrel' with himself and the upheaval around him. But this consummate biography also shows that Yeats was much more than simply a lyric poet and examines in great detail Yeats's non-poetic work--his essays, plays, polemics, and memoirs. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment and verve; while the poet himself is shown returning again and again to his governing preoccupations, sex and death. Based on complete and unprecedented access to Yeats's papers and written with extraordinary grace and insight, W.B. Yeats, A Life offers the fullest portrait yet of the private and public life of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of W. B. Yeats left him in his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent quarter-century surveyed in The Arch-Poet takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing his greatest poems: 'The Fisherman' and 'The Wild Swans at Coole' in their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on the Troubles and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically compressed last work -- some of it literally written on his deathbed. The drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution and the new Irish state founded in 1922. Yeats's many political roles and his controversial involvement in a right-wing movement during the early 1930s are covered more closely than ever before, and his complex and passionate relationship with the developing history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout this book, the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs and polemic as well as poetry) are explored through his private and public life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators, and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats constantly re-created himself and his work, believing that art was 'not the chief end of life but an accident in one's search for reality': a search which brought him again and again back to his governing preoccupations, sex and death. He also held that 'all knowledge is biography', a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest lives of modern times.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Through Jamesian powers of indication, and 15 years of research, he makes one feel one has been there, in that death-room, with Yeats's three about-to-be ''widows'' (Lady Dorothy Wellesley, Edith Shackleton Heald and Mrs. W. B. Yeats), as the poet open-eyed moved toward his tomb … Foster's treatment is superior to anything we have had before on the subject. — Adrian Frazier

Publishers Weekly

The explosive era in both Irish history and Yeats's poetry justify the length of the second volume of Oxford historian Foster's masterful life of Yeats. Again Foster approaches Yeats's memoirs with skepticism, shrewdly and scrupulously applying the historical facts to Yeats's self-made image and his poetry. The result adds a unique, superb perspective on Yeats's poetic treatment of the Easter Uprising and subsequent civil war, his eventual disenchantment with the new Irish Free State and the restless philosophical questing of his last years, up to his death just before Ireland's break from Great Britain in WWII. Following Responsibilities in 1914, Yeats had hoped to start a domestic phase in his life with his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees and his homesteader purchase of Ballylee castle. Instead, this time of upheaval saw him apotheosize two martyrs, Maude Gonne's husband in "Easter 1916," and Great War casualty Robert Gregory, in "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death." Foster's consummate treatment of the Irish Free State's violent birth further illuminates Yeats's best work in The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower with a vividness rarely found in biography. More personal matters, such as automatic-writing s ances with his wife and his theosophical treatise The Vision, are of less interest to the historian-biographer than Yeats's public figure, including his battles with Catholic censorship and his dubious but brief association with the "Blueshirt" fascist faction. Even as history caught up with and overtook the Free State senator and Nobel laureate, Foster splendidly rounds out the Celtic Twilight bard's inner revolution in his magnificent twilight years. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews