Search results
Walter de la Mare, Bertha Georgie Yeats (née Hyde-Lees), William Butler Yeats, unknown woman, summer 1930; photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell. By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir.
Middle-aged by now, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees, and the young lady agreed to marry him despite the fact that Yeats was now 51. Against all odds, the marriage proved to be a happy one and produced two children. The successful marriage, however, did not prevent the writer from having romantic liaisons with other women.
- W.B. Yeats’ mother was his earliest influence. Susan Pollexfen, W.B. Yeats’ mother, homeschooled him as a child, spending uninterrupted hours telling him Irish folklore tales.
- Young William Butler Yeats was bullied in school. In early 1877, Yeats was enrolled in London’s Godolphin School, a boarding school for boys situated near the River Thames in Hammersmith.
- Yeats proposed marriage to Maud Gonne at least four times – and was turned down each time. Yeats fell in almost obsessional love with Irish actress, suffragette, and nationalist Maud Gonne.
- Yeats also proposed marriage to Maud Gonne’s daughter. Iseult, Maud Gonne’s daughter with a French journalist and politician, also became an object of Yeat’s almost obsessive affection.
Mar 1, 2013 · After his marriage to Bertha Georgie Hyde Lees in a register office in Paddington on 20 October 1917, W. B. Yeats fell into ‘great gloom’. He accused himself of having ‘betrayed three people’, his ex-lover Maud Gonne, Gonne's daughter Iseult who had rejected his proposal of marriage earlier that year, and his new wife.
- Barry Sheils
- 2013
- Childhood
- A Young Poet
- Maud Gonne
- The Irish Literary Revival and The Abbey Theatre
- Ezra Pound
- Mysticism & Marriage
- Later Life
William Butler Yeats was born into a wealthy, artistic Anglo-Irish family in Dublin in 1865. His father, John Butler Yeats, was educated as an attorney but abandoned the law to become a well-known portrait painter. It was his father’s career as an artist that took the family to London for four years during Yeats’ boyhood. His mother, Susan Mary Pol...
Yeats was always interested in mystical theories and images, the supernatural, the esoteric and the occult. As a young man, he studied the works of William Blake and Emanuel Swedenborg and was a member of the Theosophical Society and Golden Dawn. But his early poetry was modeled on Shelley and Spenser (e.g., his first published poem, “The Isle of S...
In 1889 Yeats met Irish nationalist and actress Maud Gonne, the great love of his life. She was committed to the political struggle for Irish independence; he was devoted to the revival of Irish heritage and cultural identity, but through her influence, he did become involved in politics and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He proposed to M...
With Lady Gregory and others, Yeats was a founder of the Irish Literary Theatre, which sought to revive Celtic dramatic literature. This project lasted only a couple of years, but Yeats was soon joined by J.M. Synge in the Irish National Theatre, which moved into its permanent home at the Abbey Theatre in 1904. Yeats served as its director for some...
In 1913, Yeats became acquainted with Ezra Pound, an American poet 20 years his junior who had come to London to meet him, because he considered Yeats the only contemporary poet worth studying. Pound served as his secretary for several years, causing a ruckus when he sent several of Yeats’ poems to be published in Poetrymagazine with his own edited...
At 51, determined to marry and have children, Yeats finally gave up on Maud Gonne and proposed to Georgie Hyde-Lees, a woman half his age whom he knew from his esoteric explorations. In spite of the age difference and his long unrequited love for another, it turned out to be a successful marriage and they had two children. For many years, Yeats and...
Immediately after the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Yeats was appointed to its first Senate, where he served for two terms. In 1923 Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is generally agreed that he is one of a very few Nobel laureates who produced his best work after receiving the Prize. In the last years of his life, Yea...
On 20 October 1917 he married Bertha Georgie Hyde Lees (1892–1968; see Bertha Georgie Yeats (qv)), known as George, only daughter of William Gilbert Hyde, afterwards Hyde Lees, army officer, and Edith Ellen Woodmass. Together they supervised the renovation of Thoor, Ballylee, in 1918, intending that it should be their Irish home; in the autumn of that year they occupied the cottage beside ...
People also ask
How old was William Butler Yeats when he married Georgie Hyde-Lees?
Why did William Butler Yeats marry Maud Gonne?
Who was William Butler Yeats?
Who influenced William Butler Yeats?
Who were Butler Yeats siblings?
Why were Yeats and Gonne letters published separately?
Walter de la Mare, Bertha Georgie Yeats (née Hyde-Lees), William Butler Yeats, unknown woman, summer 1930; photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell Early life. Daughter of militia captain (William) Gilbert Hyde-Lees (1865 – 1909), of the Manchester Regiment, [3] and Edith Ellen (1868 – 1942) known as "Nelly", daughter of barrister and manufacturer Montagu Woodmass, JP, [4] [5] Georgie was born in ...
