Product Description
The life of William Butler Yeats is a remarkable one - poet, playwright, essayist, politician, occultist, astrologer, founder of a national theatre, voluminous correspondent, lover, husband and father. It was a life that extended to a packed, sometimes frantic 73 years and left us with what many consider to be one of the finest collections of poetry from once voice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Of course you could get the abridged version instead, but miss much
Oddly, Naxos repackaged much of the material here into its The Great Poets W B Yeats, which explains some of the gaps over there, where the narrator prepares us for the death of Maude Gonne, but reads a poem from later in the series, and where the narrator prepares us for the executions of 1916, but then we hear the poem of the Irish Air Man.

Here we get the whole nine yards. Get this one instead. The other is a patchwork; this is whole and entire. The other may have most of these poems in the exact same recordings; here we have them all, plus.

The brochure contains the same four page analytical biography by John Kavanaugh, but here we have more extensive biographical materials upon the two disks themselves, including the death of Olivia Shakespear - but without her poem. The other is only one disk; here two.

Especially welcome is the early long extract (over seven minutes) from the Wanderings of Oisin. We also find only here (if memory serves me well) To the Rose upon the Rood of Time, The Pity of Love, The Sorrow of Love, When You are Old, A Dream of Death, The host of the Air, The Song of Wandering Aehgus, The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love, The Caps and Bells, The Secret Rose, Adam's Curse, No Second troy, To a Child Dancing in the Wind, The Cold Heaven, September 1913, Easter 1916, The Rose Tree, Solomon to Sheba, To a Young Beauty, The Second Coming, In Memory of Eva Gore- . . ., A Dialogue of Self and Soul, At Alcegiras . . ., The Choice, three from the Crazy Jane cycle, Mohini Chatterjee, the Circus Animal's Desertion, plus several more which are not on the other disk, plus all that are available upon that other disk, over two and one half hours of poems and biography.

In brief therefore this serves well for any study of WB "Willie" Yeats and his fifty years of writing. A classroom could well benefit from its hearing while the professor naps; any high school or university library would find this in continual rotation. But please do not go for the other, abridged collection of these same recordings from Naxos, as sinful an abridgment as their abridged edition of Ulysses (Abridged) (Modern Fiction) by two of their voices here, and later corrected in totum with Ulysses (Naxos AudioBooks). For one thing that other disks may leave you scratching your head when the narrator's introduction does not match the poem immediately following, scratching your head with the feeling something is missing. It is. The full collection here.

Excellent, professional recording. You can figure out a way to hear the poems or poem you wish to hear without other voices and interjections from biographical narration on a programmable CD player. You will not be sorry; as the spirit of Mr. Yeats revisits you, comforting as to Cuchulain.

Please see as well his printed The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. 1: The Poems, 2nd Edition in their many volumes divided by type, up through The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume X: Later Articles and Reviews : Uncollected Articles, Reviews, and Radio Broadcasts Written After 1900. See also the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's selection at The Faber Yeats: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (Poet to Poet: An Essential Choice of Classic Verse). Above all, know your Yeats through the excellent Professor Helen Vendler's Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form.

Above all, read Yeats.

... Read more

Product Description
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume IV: Early Essays is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholars George Bornstein and George Mills Harper. These volumes include virtually all of the Nobel laureate's published work, in authoritative texts with extensive explanatory notes.

Early Essays, edited by the internationally esteemed Yeats scholars George Bornstein and the late Richard J. Finneran, includes the contents of the two most important collections of Yeats's critical prose, Ideas of Good and Evil(1903) and The Cutting of an Agate(1912, 1919). Among the seminal essays are considerations of Blake, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, and Synge, as well as an extended discussion of the Japanese Noh theatre. The first scholarly edition of these materials, Early Essays offers a corrected text and detailed annotation of all allusions. Several appendices gather materials from early printings which were later excluded, as well as illuminating black-and-white illustrations.

Early Essays is an essential sourcebook for understanding Yeats's career as both writer and literary critic, and for the development of modern poetry and criticism. Here, Yeats works out many of his key ideas on poetry, politics, and the theater. He gives interpretations of writers critical to his development and presents a compelling vision of Ireland and the modern world during the last decade of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth. As T. S. Eliot remarked, Yeats "was one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them." This volume displays a crucial part of that history. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Yeats was a leading 20th century poet and dramatist.He was a co founder of the Abbey Theater.In 1923 he won the Nobel Prize in literature.Many believe he wrote his greatest works after receiving the Nobel Prize.YeatsŽs writing is said to bridge the gap between the romantic period and the modern era.The Countess Cathleen is set during the Irish famine.The Countess sells her soul to the devil to save her tenants from starvation and from damnation from having sold their own souls.After her death, she is saved as her motives were altruistic and she ascends to Heaven.Because of its blasphemous attitudes the play provoked a great deal of controversy. ... Read more

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Anthology of eleven plays by William Butler Yeats, written between 1903 and 1940 ... Read more

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The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume VIII: The Irish Dramatic Movement is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholars Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. This complete edition includes virtually all of the Nobel laureate's published work, in authoritative texts and with extensive explanatory notes.

Edited by the distinguished Yeats scholars Mary FitzGerald and Richard J. Finneran, The Irish Dramatic Movement gathers together -- for the first time -- all of the poet's time-honored essays on drama and the groundbreaking movement that led to the enduring Irish theater of today.

Although the reputation of W. B. Yeats as one of the preeminent writers of the twentieth century rests primarily on his poetry, drama and the theatre were among his abiding concerns. Indeed, in 1917 he wrote, "I need a theatre; I believe myself to be a dramatist." Here in this volume is the collection of all his major dramatic criticism for the years 1899-1919, including previously uncollected material.

A practicing dramatist himself, Yeats had strong convictions about the goals of the Irish theater and the appropriate plays to be produced. The essays in this collection address many topics, from the turbulent early years of what became the Abbey Theatre to the controversies over the plays of John Millington Synge and the relationship between drama and nationalism. Also evident are Yeats's judgments on numerous plays, playwrights, and productions, both in Irish and in English.

FitzGerald and Finneran's volume includes an Introduction and a History of the Text, as well as copious but unobtrusive annotation. The Irish Dramatic Movement is an essential volume for both readers of Yeats and students of the early years of twentieth-century theater. ... Read more

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Arranged together for the first time, thirty-two introductions by W. B. Yeats to the works of such literary greats as William Blake, J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Oscar Wilde and more. ... Read more

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William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was not only a major Irish poet, but also a playwright, politician, theater founder, and literary critic. His works show his vast knowledge of Irish folklore and mythology, and they reflect his strong interest in occult studies and philosophy. This reference book is a comprehensive record of his life and works. Included are more than 1000 alphabetically arranged entries for his writings, mythological figures, places associated with Yeats, organizations to which he belonged, persons with whom he associated, and the various historical figures referred to in his major poems, plays, novels, and essays. Many entries include a brief list of works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography of primary and secondary sources. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pretty wicken little plays!
Wow, the Yeats-as-playwright is compelling. Unlike his poetry, it's very modern in its approach, but it will leave you wondering what you were supposed to come away with - and perhaps that is enough! ... Read more

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While working on a facsimile edition and transcription of W. B. Yeats's surviving early manuscripts, renowned Yeats scholar George Bornstein made a thrilling literary discovery: thirty-eight unpublished poems written between the poet's late teens and late twenties. These works span the crucial years during which the poet "remade himself from the unknown and insecure young student Willie Yeats to the more public literary, cultural, and even political figure W. B. Yeats whom we know today." "Here is a poetry marked by a rich, exuberant, awk-ward, soaring sense of potential, bracingly youthful in its promise and its clumsiness, in its moments of startling beauty and irrepressible excess," says Brendan Kennelly. And the Yeats in these pages is already experimenting with those themes with which his readers will become intimate: his stake in Irish nationalism; his profound love for Maud Gonne; his intense fascination with the esoteric and the spiritual.

With Bornstein's help, one can trace Yeats's process of self-discovery through constant revision and personal reassessment, as he develops from the innocent and derivative lyricist of the early 1880s to the passionate and original poet/philosopher of the 1890s.

Reading-texts of over two dozen of these poems appear here for the first time, together with those previously available only in specialized literary journals or monographs. Bornstein has assembled all thirty-eight under the title Yeats had once planned to give his first volume of collected poems. Under the Moon is essential reading for anyone interested in modern poetry. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more