( William Butler Yeats 1865–1939)
a leading Irish writer of poetry, plays and stories. His best-known works of poetry include The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), The Winding Stair (1933) and Collected Poems (1933). His plays include The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894) and The Green Helmet (1910), and several were written to be performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which he helped to establish. His book of stories, The Celtic Twilight , created a lot of interest in traditional Irish stories. Yeats was also much involved in politics as a nationalist and became a Senator in the Irish parliament (1922–8). He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.