"This substantial three-volume W.B. Yeats biographical and literary library combines two important modern biographies with a major scholarly edition of the poet's work, providing an excellent introduction to both the life and writings of one of Ireland's greatest literary figures. Poet, dramatist, mystic, cultural nationalist and later Senator of the Irish Free State, William Butler Yeats occupied a remarkable position at the intersection of literature, politics and the Irish cultural revival, ultimately receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
The cornerstone of the biographical material is R.F. Foster's W.B. Yeats: A Life - I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, published by Oxford University Press in 1997 First Edition. The first volume of Foster's monumental two-part biography, it follows Yeats through his first fifty years and draws upon an extensive archive of personal and contemporary material. Foster places particular emphasis upon what Yeats did, rather than treating his life merely as an adjunct to his poetry, examining his family background, relationship with Maud Gonne, involvement with Irish nationalism and the theatre, friendships, politics and enduring fascination with occultism and supernatural thought.
Keith Alldritt's W.B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu, published by John Murray in 1997 First Edition, provides a complementary portrait, examining the public, energetic and sometimes combative personality behind Yeats's carefully cultivated literary image. Alldritt considers Yeats not only as poet and mystic but as dramatist, nationalist, political figure and determined literary operator, placing particular emphasis upon his relationships and involvement with the extraordinary intellectual and artistic world surrounding him. The substantial work extends to nearly 400 pages with plates, bibliography and index.
Completing the collection is W.B. Yeats: The Poems, edited and introduced by Daniel Albright and published in the distinguished Everyman's Library series in 1992. This handsome substantial volume of more than 850 pages brings together Yeats's poetry with extensive editorial material, allowing the reader to encounter directly the work whose development the accompanying biographies illuminate—from the Celtic and romantic atmosphere of the early poems through to the increasingly modernist, political and philosophical poetry of his maturity. Together these three substantial hardcover volumes form an excellent W.B. Yeats biographical and literary library, with all three retaining their original unclipped dustjackets, additionally protected by removable clear protective sleeves."
