William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Born into a family of Dublin artists in 1864, he was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, the cultural movement that preceded the country’s political independence from Britain.

Influenced at first by important English poetic precursors, Yeats would become immersed in Irish material and political realities, transforming his style from ornate mysticism to acute social commentary. In his extraordinary late work these elements combine with personal preoccupations to create some of the most memorable images in modern literature.

Lucy Collins, editor of the Irish University Review and an associate professor at University College Dublin, explores the cultural politics of early 20th-century Ireland as the crucible within which Yeats’ work was formed and examines how the political and the personal combine in some of his greatest poems.

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