
The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats
Volume IV, 1905-1907
Oxford University Press
Published on 22. December 2005
Book
Hardback
1192 pages
978-0-19-812684-3 (ISBN)
Description
This volume covers a tumultuous period in Yeats's public and personal life, beginning with the acrimonious collapse of Maud Gonne's marriage to Major MacBride (who not only accused Yeats of being her lover but also threatened to shoot him). Dramas at the Abbey Theatre were hardly less intense, both on and off the stage: the euphoria which followed the successful opening of the new theatre quickly dispersed in a relentless cycle of quarrels and schisms. Yeats's attempts to turn an enthusiastic but ill-disciplined amateur society into a professional company led to a permanent division in the company, while the vagaries of Annie Horniman, the irascible patron of the theatre, put the whole movement under permanent tension. Violence actually broke out in January 1907 when the audience rioted at the production of John Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, believing it to be a libel on Ireland. Through all this we see Yeats maturing as an artist: discussing the writing and revising of his poems and plays, preparing the first elaborate American edition of his poems, and undertaking an ambitious eight-volume Collected Works through which he hoped to define his artistic personality. The letters not only record this energetic and often bruising period, but also bear witness to Yeats's indomitable fighting spirit and artistic integrity.
Reviews / Votes
This fourth volume of The Collected Letters shows Yeats in the full throes of professional life and focuses particularly on his engagement with the Irish drama movement. The editors John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard have provided a superb narrative introduction to a volume that includes letters both to and from Yeats and an appendix documenting the tumultuous history of the Abbey Theatre that is a valuable study in itself. Kelly and Schuchards detailed annotations are thorough but never pedantic, the letters themselves are unusually fascinating, and the whole provides a sense of both sweep and detail. An exemplary marriage of literary pleasure and scholarly brilliance, The Collected Letters will be a work of abiding interest to both general readers and specialists. * MLA Prize Committee *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 243 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 48 mm
Weight
1389 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-812684-3 (9780198126843)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Editor
, Fellow and Tutor in English, St John's College, Oxford
, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
Content
List of Illustrations ; Chronology: W. B. Yeats 1865-1939 ; Note on Editorial Principles ; List of Manuscript Sources ; List of Abbreviations and Short Forms ; Introduction to Volume IV ; THE LETTERS 1905-1907 ; Biographical and Historical Appendix ; Index of Recipients ; General Index