W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, a central figure of the Irish Literary Revival. Born near Dublin into an Anglo-Irish family, he divided his youth between London, Dublin, and County Sligo, whose landscape and folklore shaped his early verse. He helped found the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and wrote plays alongside his poetry, drawing on Irish mythology, mysticism, and esoteric symbolism. His style evolved from lyrical romanticism toward a spare, modern idiom. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and served as a senator of the Irish Free State, living at 82 Merrion Square, Dublin, during those years. He wintered at Rapallo, Italy, in the late 1920s and spent his final Irish years at Riversdale, Rathfarnham. He died in southern France in 1939; his remains were later reinterred at Drumcliff, County Sligo.