Faber & Faber

John Butler Yeats Letters: J. B. Yeats

Synopsis:

John Butler Yeats was born in County Down in 1839. Both his father and grandfather were Church of England rectors. He followed them into Trinity College, but trained as a barrister. He never practised law, and soon after his marriage to Susan Pollexfen of Sligo moved with his family to London to study drawing. He spent ten years there among painters, bohemians and intellectuals before returning to Dublin to work as a portraitist. In 1997 he moved again to London, where he became a leading figure in a circle of artists and intellectuals in Bedford Park. At the age of sixty he returned once more to Dublin, where his son the poet W. B Yeats was the principal figure in the Irish Literary Revival. In 1907 he left for New York, where he died in 1922. He was also the father of the painter Jack B. Yeats and two gifted daughters, Lily and Lollie.

All his life people were drawn to his genius, though it was felt that it was often realised more fully in his conversation than in his art. W. B. Yeats wrote that his father had 'the most natural of the fine minds I have known', and it is abundantly present in these captivating letters.

Two selections of the letters were published in his lifetime, the first edited by Ezra Pound in 1917 and another by Lennox Robinson in 1920. In 1944 a much more comprehensive selection was made by Joseph Hone, the distinguished biographer and a Yeats family friend. This has now been abridged for this attractive new edition by the novelist John McGahern, who has written a fine introductory essay.

Tags:

Categorised as:

Non-fiction

Sub-categories:

Essays & Prose

Genres & Themes:

Genius; Intellectuals; Letters