W. B. Yeats: A Select Bibliography

Biographies and General Introductions
  • Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (London: OUP 1941; rep. 1967).
  • T[homas] R. Henn, The Lonely Tower: Studies in the Poetry of Yeats (London: Methuen 1950; rev. edn. 1965), 375pp.
  • A. Norman Jeffares: W. B. Yeats: A New Biography (London: Hutchinson 1988; reps. 1989, 1990, 2001), x, 374pp.;
  • Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats (London: Macmillan 1954; rep. Faber 1964; 1983), ix, 343pp. [Appendix, Chronology, and Notes, pp.250ff.;
  • Denis Donoghue, ed., The Integrity of Yeats [RTE/Thomas Davis Lectures, 1960] (Cork: Mercier Press 1964), 70pp., & Do . (Folcroft Library Editions, 1971), [3], 70pp.
  • Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats ( Oxford: Blackwell 2001), 432pp.;
  • R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: ‘The Apprentice Mage’ (OUP 1996), 625pp., Do ., pb. rep. (1998), 672pp.; R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats - A Life, II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939 ( Oxford: OUP 2003), 798pp. [with index].
 
Note: Foster’s is the authoritative biography but you are not expected to read it in full – only at best to familiarise yourselves with its practical value as a resource in research and writing.

Topical studies
  • George Mills Harper, ed., Yeats and The Occult (London: Macmillan 1976), 322pp.
  • G[eorge] J. Watson, ‘W. B. Yeats, from “Unity of Culture” to “Anglo-Irish Solitude”’, in Irish Identity and the Literary Revival (London: Croom Helm 1979), pp.87-150;
  • Mary Helen Thuente, W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980; Totowa: Barnes & Noble 1981), x, 286pp.
  • Deane, ‘Yeats and the Idea of Revolution’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980 (London: Faber & Faber 1985), pp.38-50.
  • Edward Said, Yeats and Decolonialization [Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature] (Derry: Field Day 1988), 27pp.;
  • Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Gender and History in Yeats’s Love Poetry (Cambridge UP 1993; Syracuse 1996), xiii, 334pp.
  • Jonathan Allison, ed., Yeats’s Political Identities: Selected Essays ( Michigan UP 1996) [ contents ].
  • Marjorie Elizabeth Howes, Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class and Irishness ( Cambridge UP 1996), ix, 240pp.

Reference works & Collections
  • N. Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1984).
  • Jonathan Allison, ed., Yeats’s Political Identities: Selected Essays ( Michigan UP 1996), 352pp.
  • Majorie Howes & John Kelly, eds., The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats ( Cambridge UP 2006), xvi, 242 [4]pp.
[See over for contents of the above]

[ top ]
Bibliographical details - collections
Yeats’s Political Identities: Selected Essays, ed. Jonathan Allison ( Michigan UP 1996), 352pp.
CONTENTS: Acknowledgments [ix]; Allison, Introduction: Fascism, Nationalism, Reception’ [1]. PART 1: Yeats and Fascism. Conor Cruise O’Brien, [from] ‘Passion and Cunning: An Essay on the Politics of W. B. Yeats’ [29]; Conor Cruise O’Brien, [from] ‘Introduction to Passion and Cunning and Other Essays’ [57]; Elizabeth Cullingford, ‘From Democracy to Authority’ [61]. PART 2: Yeats and the Ascendancy. R. F. Foster, ‘Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History’ [83]; Marjorie Howes, ‘Family Values: Gender, Sexuality, and Crisis in Yeats’s Anglo-Irish Aristocracy’ [107]. PART 3. Nationalism and Revolution. Seamus Deane, ‘Yeats and the Idea of Revolution’ [133]; Declan Kiberd, ‘Inventing Irelands’ [145]; Richard Kearney, [from] ‘Myth and Terror’ [165]; David Lloyd, [from] ‘The Poetics of Politics: Yeats and the Founding of the State’ [181]; Edna Longley, ‘Helicon and ni Houlihan: Michael Robartes and the Dancer ’ [203]; Maurice Harmon, ‘Yeats, Austin Clarke and Seán O’Faoláin’ [221]; George Bornstein, ‘Romancing the (Native) Stone: Yeats, Stevens, and the Anglocentric Canon’ [235]. PART 4. Seamus Heaney, ‘Some Responses: In the Midst of the Force Field’ [257]; Augustine Martin, ‘What Stalked through the Post Office?’ [reply to Seamus Deane] [261]; Terence Brown, ‘Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Critical Debate’ [279]; David Krause, The De-Yeatsification Cabal’ [293]; Hazard Adams, Yeats and Antithetical Nationalism’ [309]; Ronald Bush, ‘The Modernist under Siege’ [325]. Select Annotated Bibliography [335]; Contributors’ [349].
[ top ]
The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats, ed. Majorie Howes & John Kelly ( Cambridge UP 2006), xvi, 242 [4]pp.
CONTENTS: 1. Marjorie Howes, Introduction [1]; 2. George Bornstein, ‘Yeats and Romanticism’ [19]; 3. George Watson, ‘Yeats, Victorianism, and the 1890s’ [36]; 4. Daniel Albright, ‘Yeats and Modernism’ [59]; 5. Helen Vendler, ‘The later poetry’ [77]; 6. Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Yeats and the drama’ [101]; 7. Declan Kiberd, ‘Yeats and criticism’ [115]; 8. James Pethica, ‘Yeats, folklore, and Irish legend’ [129]; 9. Margaret Mills Harper, ‘Yeats and the Occult’ [144]; 10. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘Yeats and gender’ [167]; 11. Jonathan Allison, ‘Yeats and politics’ [185]; 12. Howes, ‘Yeats and the postcolonial [206]; Select bibliography [226]; Index [232]; Selected Bibliography & Index [226ff.]

[ back ]

[ top ]