{"product_id":"wb-yeats-a-life-i-the-apprentice-mage-18651914","title":"W.B. Yeats: A Life I: The Apprentice Mage  1865-1914","description":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Butler Yeats has cast his long shadow over the history of both modern poetry and modern Ireland for so long that his preeminence is taken for granted. Now  in the first authorized biography of Yeats to appear in over fifty years  leading Irish historian R.F. Foster travels beyond Yeatss towering image as arguably the centurys greatest poet to restore a real sense of Yeatss extraordinary life as Yeats himself experienced it--what he saw  what he did  the passions and the petty squabbles that consumed him  and his alchemical ability to transmute the events of his crowded and contradictory life into enduring art. In the first volume of this long-awaited biography  Foster covers the poets first fifty years  bringing new light to bear on Yeatss heroic and often ruthless efforts to invent himself as a poet and public figure. Drawn from a fascinating archive of personal and contemporary documents with the cooperation of surviving members of the Yeats family  it dramatically alters long-held assumptions about the poets background  his relationship with Maud Gonne and other women  and his roles in the great cultural and political upheavals that transformed Ireland in his lifetime. A rich and entertaining account of Yeatss boyhood days amidst the talented but troubled members of the Yeats and Pollexfen clans provides important insight into the poets deep and lifelong connection to the Irish landscape  his early  impassioned embrace of the nationalist cause  and his later retreat to the traditions of the once grand Protestant aristocracy. In his own day Yeats attracted enemies and admirers with equal passion  and Foster vividly recreates the friendships  love affairs  and simmering rivalries that swirled about the poets circles in London  Dublin  and Coole Park. Complementing his meticulous scholarship with a shrewd wit and a novelists eye for detail  he chronicles the romantic disappointments  financial difficulties  experimentation with hashish and mescal  and the growing preoccupation with the occult that prefaced Yeatss attempt to unite Irish politics with high culture and his creation of an Irish national theater. Here are the poets memorable encounters with many of the most interesting people of his time  including Oscar Wilde  George Bernard Shaw  Lady Gregory  J.M. Synge  Ezra Pound  James Joyce  and the wildly diverse leaders of the Irish independence movement. And here at last is a full accounting of the complex bond between Yeats and the incomparable Maud Gonne  revealed as an influence eternally recreated like the phoenix  affecting almost everything he did. Poet  playwright  mystic and revolutionary; lover  confidant  and friend. This brilliant account of the public and private lives of William Butler Yeats illuminates not only the wellspring of his artistic vision  but the modern Irish identity he helped to create. It is essential reading for anyone intrigued by one of the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44945988255797,"sku":"ByrdShop_0192117351","price":30.46,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780192117359.jpg?v=1769918029","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/wb-yeats-a-life-i-the-apprentice-mage-18651914","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}