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WB Yeats and his circle (for Joyceans)

c1895? [pic source]

This is one of the few WBY pix I can bear to look at-- in almost all the others he looks like such a pompous twit I want to slap him!

Sources:

Foster's bio is brilliant but so detailed it makes difficult reading. Jeffares' 'New Biography' is more readable but not entirely trustworthy. Volume One of the Collected Letters gives the best sense of his evolving personality (and has great footnotes). Volume Two [review] came out after V3.

jk = John Kelly's timeline from Collected Letters v1

rff = RF Foster's WB Yeats [Amazon] summary [1st chapter] (there's a skipped prologue, too)

dtm = Gomes's Dawning of the Theosophist Movement [Amazon]
gds = RA Gilbert's The Golden Dawn Scrapbook [Amazon]
wbya = WBY's Autobiographies (Collected Works Vol 3) [Amazon]
anj = AN Jeffares' WBY: a new biography [Amazon]
gyL = MacBride and Jeffares' The Gonne-Yeats Letters [Amazon]
sb = WBY's The Speckled Bird (O'Donnell, ed) [Bibliofind] [ABE]
ygd = GM Harper's Yeats's Golden Dawn [Bibliofind] [ABE]
dh = JE&GW; Dunleavy's Douglas Hyde [Bibliofind] [ABE]
lfae = Alan Denson's Letters from AE [Bibliofind] [ABE]
rbd = RB Davis's George William Russell ('AE') [Bibliofind] [ABE]
cl1y = John Kelly's Collected Letters of WBY: Vol 1, 1865-1895 [Bibliofind] [ABE]
mgyb = Samuel Levenson's Maud Gonne: Yeats' Beloved [Bibliofind] [ABE]

Online bios: Donoghue; NYT obit; EB, bio, timeline, ditto

anagrams

Related pages: Maud, AE, The Household, Theosophy, gossip, 25 faves

1839: John Butler Yeats (JBY) born in County Down (father, d1922)

JBY would become a very good painter but was always a financial ne'er-do-well. [info] more

1852: 05Mar: Isabella Augusta Persse (later Lady Gregory) born in County Galway (patroness and collaborator, d1932) [EB] [bio]

1858? Katherine Tynan born [cite]

1863: 24yo JBY marries 22yo Susan Pollexfen

1865: 13Jun: William Butler Yeats born in Dublin [EB] [bio] [timeline] ditto

1866: JBY works as lawyer for one year [jk]

1866: 25Aug: sister Lily (Susan Mary) born [jk]

1866? 21Dec? Maud Gonne born in England [bio&links;] (d1953) [gyL5]

Maud Gonne was WBY's lifelong romantic obsession (from 1889 on). Mother and adored father died early.

1867: Yeats family moves to London [jk]
1867: born: George William Russell (AE) [bio&links;] more (closest friend, d1935) [Bibliofind]
1868: 11Mar: sister Lollie (Elizabeth Corbet) born [jk]

1868-72: WBY hears ghost and fairy stories in Sligo during summer visits [rff21]

1871: 29Aug: born: Jack B Yeats [info] more (brother, painter, d1957)

bio of WBY's early years: NYT

WBY grew up around the art avant-garde in Dublin and London, plus periods in Sligo (mother's relatives) [map]

1872-74: mother and children stay in Sligo [jk]
1874: Oct: family back to London [jk]
1876: summer in Sligo, JBY and WBY only return to London in autumn [jk]
1876: autumn: earliest surviving letters, from Farnham Royal [cl1y3]
1877: Jan: joined by mother and sibs; WBY attends Godolphin School until 1881 [jk]
1879: spring: Yeats family moves to Bedford Park [info]
1880: 28yo Augusta Persse marries 62yo Sir William Henry Gregory (one son, born 1881)

1881: late-autumn: JBY money problems, move back to Dublin (Howth); WBY starts at Erasmus Smith HS; long talks about art with JBY [jk]
1881: WBY befriends 14yo Charles Johnston [rff45]
1882: address Kilrock road, Howth until spring 1882, then Island View, Harbour road, Howth [jk, cl1y5]
1882: autumn: first crush, on 20yo distant-cousin Laura Armstrong, awakens WBY from "the metallic sleep of science"
1882: 16yo WBY inspired by Shelley to write first serious poetry. Example: [cl1y7, spelling corrected]

A flower has blossomed, the world heart core
The petals and leaves were a moon white flame
A [I?] gathered the flower, the colourless lore
The abundant meadow of fate and fame
Many men gathers and few may use
The sacred [secret?] oil and the sacred cruse.

(I like this better than JAJ's 16yo pretensions: qv)

1883: 20Nov: WBY hears Wilde lecture in Dublin [jk]
1883: Dec: WBY leaves HS, planning to make poetry his career [rff33]

1884: 08Jan: starts play 'Vivien and Time' [jk, rff37, renamed 'Time and the Witch Vivien'] [etext]
1884: Lyster helps WBY with Spenserian verse play Island of Statues [epilogue]
1884: early spring: family moves to 10 Ashfield terrace, Terenure [jk]
1884: May: WBY starts at Metropolitan School of Art in Kildare street, meets AE (and Althea Gyles?), experiments with 'odic force' with Charles Johnston (CJ) at Museum [rff36, 46] 'odic' coined by Baron Reichenbach from 'Odin' [wbya97]

1884? Dowden introduces WBY et al to Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism [cite]

late 1884: WBY's London aunt Isabella Pollexfen Varley sends him Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism

"I was unlike others of my generation in one thing only: I am very religious, and deprived by Huxley and Tyndall, whom I detested, of the simple-minded religion of my childhood..." [cite]

WBY hates Manet's realism: "...no desirable place, no man I could have wished to be, no woman I could have loved, no Golden Age, no lure for secret hope..." [rff36]

"I was humiliated, and wrote always of proud, confident men and women." [rff37]

Ezra Pound of WBY c1914? 'He learns by emotion, and is one of the few people... who know what violent emotion really is like...' [rff-xxvii]

1884 poems:
Ephemera [txt]
The Madness of King Goll [txt]
The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes [txt]

1885: WBY lends 'Esoteric Buddhism' to CJ [rff45]
1885: 19Jan: John O'Leary returns from exile in Paris [jk]
1885: John O'Leary recognises WBY's genius, helps awaken his nationalism [jk]
1885: Feb: Dublin University Review founded by 25yo Oldham and 28yo Rolleston
1885: Mar: WBY's first poems in Dublin University Review ('Song of the Faeries' and 'Voices') [jk]

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay?
He is a monstrous peacock, and he waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

no-date: WBY tells AE idea for 'Shadowy Waters': 'a world wanderer trying to escape from himself through a journey to eternity' [rff56]

1885: Apr-Jun: DUR publishes 'Island of Statues' [jk]
1885: 02Jun: DUR meeting incl WBY and Douglas Hyde discusses goal of national spirit [jk]
1885: 16Jun: WBY and CJ found Dublin Hermetic Society (also 18yo Claude Falls Wright, 18yo Charles Weekes, WK (or HM??) Magee, Alaud Ali) [rff47] (this would be replaced by a Theosophical lodge in 1886, then revived by AE from 1898-1933)

WBY on Hermetic Society: "A little body of young men hired a room in York Street... and began to read papers to one another on the Vedas, and the Upanishads, and the Neoplatonists, and on modern mystics and spiritualists. They had no scholarship, and they spoke and wrote badly, but they discussed great problems ardently and simply and unconventionally as men, perhaps, discussed great problems in the medieval universities."

WBY proposes "that whatever the great poets had affirmed in their finest moments was the nearest we could come to an authoritative religion, and that their mythology, their spirits of water and wind, were but literal truth." [wbya97]

1885: late-Jun: 20yo WBY meets 24yo Katherine Tynan [jk]
1885: Oct: WBY joins Young Ireland Society (takes Fenian oath?)
1885: 21Nov: Contemporary Club founded (incl Hyde, JBY, Sigerson, AE, JF Taylor, Davitt, Rolleston, O'Leary) [jk]

"I wished to become self-possessed, to be able to play with hostile minds as Hamlet played" [wbya99]

Dowden on WBY: "He hangs in the balance between genius and (to speak rudely) fool." [cite]

1885 poems:
Song of the Happy Shepherd [txt]
The Sad Shepherd [txt]

1886? WBY's first seance
1886: WBY reads George Eliot [cl1y7]
1886: Apr: WBY drops out of art school [jk]
1886: 11Apr: WBY meets Wm Morris at Contemporary Club [jk]
1886: Apr: Dublin Lodge of Theosophical Society founded by CJ [rff47] Charter members were: CJ, LAM Johnston (sister?), maybe WBY?, 22yo FJ Gregg, ?21yo HM Magee, EA Seale, WF Smeeth, RA Potterton [rff552]

1886: Apr: 28yo Mohini Chatterjee visits Dublin group for a week [rff48, yp600] (he soon broke chastity vows with UK admirers)

WBY's 1886 poems about MC: 'The Indian upon God' [txt], 'The Indian to his Love' [txt]

WBY also wrote a poem with his name in 1929:

I asked if I should pray.
But the Brahmin said,
'Pray for nothing, say
Every night in bed,
"I have been a king,
I have been a slave,
Nor is there anything.
Fool, rascal, knave,
That I have not been,
And yet upon my breast
A myriad heads have lain."'

That he might set at rest
A boy's turbulent days
Mohini Chatterjee
Spoke these, or words like these...

1886: summer: address Rosses Point, Sligo [cl1y7]
1886: summer: WBY describes instinct as "dim unconscious nature... which (if there is any truth in Darwen) is the accumulated wisdom of all living things" [cl1y8]

1886: Oct: WBY's verse play Mosada published; starts 'Oisin' [jk]
1886: Nov (to Apr): lively social life via Contemporary Club crowd [jk]
1886: Dec: WBY's poem "The Stolen Child" [etext]

Tynan on WBY: "beautiful to look at, with his dark face, its touch of vivid colouring, the night-black hair, the eager dark eyes"

WBY: "I hate reasonable people... The only buisness [sic, dyslexic] of the head in the world is to bow ceaseless obeisance to the heart." [slwby8]

AE says WBY writes 2 hours per day, no matter what [rff52]

1886 poems:
The Indian upon God [txt]
The Indian to his Love [txt]
[Jun] The Meditations of the Old Fisherman [txt]
The Stolen Child [txt]

1887: 02Jan: WBY's 'blather' bores Hyde at Dowden's [rff57]
1887: 11Mar: address 10 Ashfield terrace, Harold's Cross [cl1y9]
1887: 11Mar: WBY calls Whitman "the greatest teacher of these decades" [cl1y9]

1887: early Apr: WBY moves back to London-- abrupt loss of social life [jk]
1887: 27Apr: temp address 6 Berkeley road, Regents Park road [cl1y10]
1887: 27Apr: WBY to K Tynan: "I feel more and more that we shall have a school of Irish poetry-- founded on Irish myth and History-- a neoremantic movement." [cl1y11]

1887: 06May: WBY hears Tim Healy address House of Commons and praises his "good earth power" [cl1y14]
1887: 08May: address 58 Eardley Crescent, S Kensington [cl1y12]
1887: 18May: WBY sick and miserable, likes only Ernest Rhys [cl1y15]

HPB in 1887

1887: May: HP Blavatsky relocates to London, stays with Mabel Collins (Cook) [memoirs]
1887: spring: CJ meets HPB [memoir] introduces WBY [rff62] [memoir] [cite] [cf CJ]

1887: 19Jun: WBY begins regular attendance at Wm Morris's Sunday night salon [jk]
1887: 29Jun: WBY gets British Museum Reading Room ticket [rff104]
1887: 01Jul: WBY to Tynan re Wm Morris: "though I think socialism good work I am not sure that it is my work" [cl1y23] re 32yo Wm Sharp "hated his red British face of flaccid contentement" [cl1y24]

SL Mathers in 1889

1887? WBY meets Samuel Liddell Mathers at British Museum
1887? WBY claims initiated into Hermetic Students in Charlotte street (in May or June???) [wbya160] included Mathers and 71yo WA Ayton (perhaps Kingsford's?)

1887: summer: MaudG starts affair with Lucien Millevoye (already-married journalist)

1887: 09Aug: WBY to Sligo, still working on 'Oisin' [jk, rff71]
1887: 13Aug: address Rosses Point, Sligo (uncle George Pollexfen) [cl1y33]
1887: 25Oct: address Charlemont, Sligo (grandparents relocated) [cl1y38]
1887: 18Nov: finished 'Oisin' [jk]
1887: 22Nov: WBY from Sligo to Dublin, social whirl renewed [jk, cl1y41]
1887: 23Nov: witty letter to 'The Gael' protesting misprints in poem [cl1y42]
1887: 11Dec: WBY re-introduces AE to Tynan, also Hyde [jk]
1887: 13Dec: address Whitehall, Clondalkin (Tynans) [cl1y43. rff72 says until 24/25Jan]
1887: Dec: WBY's mother's health collapses [jk]
1887: late Dec: AE in Dublin plans thought transference with WBY (not yet back?) in London [lfae5]

1887: 20Dec? MaudG inherits some £20,000 at age 21

'a great red-haired yahoo of a woman' [rff91]

WBY wants regular work for security but JBY advises against it for artistic reasons [cite]

1887 poems:
Anashuya and Vijaya [txt]
The Ballad of Moll Magee [txt]

1888: Jan: traumatic seance, perhaps at Sigersons (AE refused even to go) [rff51, 556]
1888: 14Jan: Telegraph parodies WBY's circle:

"...considered by himself and his friends to be a titanic power... he is too exquisite and ethereal to be understood or appreciated by the common British reviewer and hence his obscurity... [WBY] invites you to believe [in him] by the ingratiating sweetness with which he takes his spoiling"

1888: 26Jan: address: 58 Eardley Crescent, S Kensington [cl1y45]
1888: Feb: Rhys commissions book of Irish folklore [jk]
1888: 21Mar: WBY starts attending Southwark Irish Literary Club, lectures on fairies on 13Jun [jk]
1888: 11Apr: address 3 Blenheim road, Bedford Park [cl1y58, since 24Mar, rent £45]
1888: 28Jul: starts attending Lady Wilde's Saturday parties [jk]
1888: late-Sep: WBY's Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry [jk] [etext]
1888: Sep: first version of WBY's poem 'Salley Gardens'
1888: 06Nov: AE writes HPB expressing concern apparently about WBY's experiments [lfae6, published 15Dec in Lucifer]
1888: mid-Dec: first version of 'Lake Isle of Innisfree' inspired in part by Thoreau [cite] [jk]

[pic source]

1888: 25Dec: Xmas with Oscar Wilde [jk]
1888: Dec: WBY joins TS ES [jk says Nov]

when WBY reads a paper to the Theo Soc, he reads so poorly that Blavatsky suggests he speak extemporaneously, which turns out to be very good advice

Golden Dawn members:

1888: Mathers, Wescott, Woodman
1889-90: Moina Bergson, Ayton, Horniman, Constance Wilde (briefly)
1890: WBY, Florence Farr
1891: Maud Gonne (briefly)
1892: Todhunter. (Mathers to Paris, Wescott leads in London)
1893: George Pollexfen (124 total)
1897: (Farr leads in London)

1888 poems:
Down by the Salley Gardens [txt]
The Ballad of Father O'Hart [txt]
[Dec] Lake Isle of Innisfree [txt] [RealAudio]

1889: 10Jan? 'Wanderings of Oisin' published [jk] [etext] [crit] [biblio] including early poems later called 'Crossways' [etext] ditto?
1889: Jan: WBY essay "Irish Fairies, Ghosts and Witches" in 'Lucifer' [etext]

1889: 30Jan: love at first sight for Maud Gonne, begins 'Countess Kathleen'
1889: 02Mar: WBY essay "Scots and Irish Fairies" in 'Scots Observer' [etext]
1889: Mar? WBY begins deep study of Blake's prophetic works [jk]
1889: 06May: reads 'Kathleen' to Florence Farr [jk]
1889: 29May: WBY addresses Southwark club on Mangan [jk]
1889: 07Jun: WBY sees Ibsen's 'Doll's House' [wbya219]

buys Archer's edition of collected works "out of my 30 shillings a week", studies Ibsen with Florence Farr

1889: summer? WBY meets 22yo Lionel Johnson (huge fan of 'Oisin') [cl1y496]

close friend until 1895, model for 'Owen Aherne', Paterian

1889: 23Aug: WBY's edition of Carleton published [jk]
1889: 05Oct: WBY essay "Columkille and Rosses" in 'Scots Observer' [etext]
1889: 17Nov: WBY shaves beard ('decadent' style?) [pix]

Freeman's Journal on 'Oisin': "a jumble of confused ideas in a maze of verbiage" [rff86]

1889 poems:
The Falling of the Leaves [txt]
To an Isle in the Water [txt]
The Ballad of the Foxhunter [qv]

1890: WBY's review of Lady Wilde's "Ancient Cures" [review]
1890: 04Jan: WBY essay "Bardic Ireland" in 'Scots Observer' [etext]
1890: 11Jan: MaudG secretly gives birth to Millvoye's son Georges [jk, rff92]
1890: Jan? 24yo WBY, 30yo Rhys and 32yo Rolleston found the Rhymers Club in London, with well-read 22yo Lionel Johnson, dissipated 22yo Ernest Dowson, already-established critic 24yo Arthur Symons, and two of JBY's friends: 41yo Edwin Ellis and 51yo John Todhunter [jk, rff107]

multigenerational, literary log-rollers, gay-friendly, artificial and self-satisfied, mostly Celtic, Pater and Rossetti as touchstones, read new poems aloud (WBY's 'gradschool'); meet at Cheshire Cheese [pix] off Fleet St

1890: 07Mar: WBY joins Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at 17 Fitzroy [jk, ygd159] [info] (Lionel Johnson had rooms on Fitzroy? rff107)

he chose the occult name 'Demon Est Deus Inversus' ('the Demon' for short!) [rff104, 242]

1890: 05May: WBY sees Florence Farr in Todhunter's 'Sicilian Idyll' [cl1y217n, jk]
1890: Jul: Florence Farr joins OGD [cite] [bio] [bio]
1890: Oct: WBY's essay 'Irish Fairies' in Leisure Hour [cl1y25n] [etext]
1890: Oct: HPB asks WBY to resign from TS ES after he criticises 'Lucifer' in the 'Weekly Review' because he won't promise not to criticise again [rff103]
1890: mid-Oct: health crisis [jk]
1890: Nov-Dec: Parnell crisis in Ireland [jk]
1890: 13Dec: 'Innisfree' makes a splash [rff109]

1890 poems:
[Jan] A Cradle Song [txt]
The Ballad of Father Gilligan [txt]
The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner [txt]

1891: 28Feb: WBY reviews Douglas Hyde's "Beside the Fire" [review]
1891: Mar: WBY's edition of 'Representative Irish Tales' [jk]
1891: Jun: Lionel Johnson converts to Catholicism [sl1y496] (Dowson too?)
1891: 17Jul? WBY to Dublin, meets Maud 22Jul [jk]
1891: 23Jul: stays with CJ for a week in county Down [jk]
1891: early Aug: writing 'Rosy Cross Lyrics', stays with Tynans et al [jk]
1891: 31Aug: death of Georges Gonne of meningitis [anj59 says 29Jul]
1891: 15Sep: WBY and John O'Leary found Young Ireland League [anj69, jk]

O'Leary to WBY: "In this country a man must have upon his side the Church or the Fenians, and you will never have the Church."

1891: 30Sep: suicide of Boulanger [mgyb65]
1891: 06Oct: death of Parnell [jk says 07]
1891: 10Oct: WBY meets Maud in Dublin on same mailboat carrying Parnell's body [anj59]
1891: 20Oct: Maud leaves Dublin with 'vellum book' of new-since-July poems, apparently illustrated by AE [rff117, lfae252]
1891: 21Oct? WBY returns to London [jk]
1891: 02Nov? Maud Gonne joins Golden Dawn [anj62, gyL21, cl1y266n]
1891: 02Nov? (Mon): WBY introduces Maud to Rhymers at Ellis's, successfully [cl1y270, lehh104]
1891: early Nov: pseudonymous novellas 'John Sherman' and 'Dhoya' [editing] [bibliog] ditto
1891: Dec? Maud visits London from Paris [anj62]
1891: 28Dec: WBY starts organising Irish Literary Society in Bedford Park, as a way to raise advance funds for Irish publications [anj69]

Gonne's 1yo son died just before Parnell, and WBY stepped in to console her, especially via magick rituals

WBY on Ireland post-1891:

"Nationalist Ireland was torn with every kind of passion and prejudice, wanting so far as it wanted any literature at all, Nationalist propaganda disguised as literature. All the past had been turned into a melodrama with Ireland the blameless hero..." [cite]

WBY: 'a tall, dark-visaged young man who walked the streets of Dublin and London in a poetic hat, cloak, and flowing tie, intoning verses' (Louise Bogan) [cite]

Golden Dawn members included: WBY, Maud Gonne, Annie Horniman, Arthur Machen [etext] and Arthur Waite timeline [pix]

1891 poems:
The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland [txt]
The Dedication to a Book of Stories selected from the Irish Novelists [txt]
A Faery Song [txt]
The Countess Cathleen in Paradise [txt]
[Oct] The Sorrow of Love [txt]
[21Oct] When You are Old [txt]
A Dream of Death [txt]
The Rose of the World [txt]

1892: death of Lady Gregory's husband, Sir William Henry Gregory
1892: Jan: WBY plans new 'Library of Ireland' series [jk]
1892: 13Jan: founded: Irish Literary Society [jk, anj69]
1892: Feb: Book of the Rhymers' Club [jk]
1892: May: WBY's edition of 'Irish Fairy Tales' [jk] [etext]
1892: 06May: copyright performance of 'Countess Kathleen' [jk]
1892: mid-May: to Dublin to found National Literary Society [jk]
1892: 09Jun: WBY, Maud, et al address NLS steering committee meeting [jk]

Jun-Mar: Gavan Duffy (with Rolleston, Sigerson, and JF Taylor's support) outmanoevres WBY for control of NLS library [anj70]

1892: late Aug: The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics published [jk] [biblio] including poems later called 'The Rose' [etext]
1892: Oct: WBY in Sligo until 20Nov, then Clontarf [jk]
1892: Oct: WBY's "Invoking the Irish Fairies" in first issue of Irish Theosophist [etext] ('DD' is probably Florence Farr)

Nov 1892: Joyce family moves to north Dublin, Joyce spends the winter exploring

1892: 26Nov: 'Natl Observer' publishes ?1st 'Secret Rose' story (Dhoul and Hanrahan) [cl1y272n]
1892: 27Nov: Hyde's historic pro-Gaelic address is inaugural NLS lecture [jk]
1892: 17Dec: WBY (in United Ireland) defends English as the proper language for Irish literature, against Hyde's recent claim for Irish-Gaelic [rff126]
1892: mid-Dec: WBY returns to London [jk]

1892 poems:
The Rose of Peace [txt]
The Rose of Battle (They went forth...) [txt]
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time
The Pity of Love [txt]
The White Birds [txt]
Who Goes with Fergus [txt]
The Two Trees [txt]
To Ireland in the Coming Times [txt]
Fergus and the Druid [txt]
Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea [txt]
The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart [txt]
Maid Quiet [txt]
The Poet pleads with the Elemental Powers [txt]
[Nov] The Fiddler of Dooney [txt]

1893: LadyG writes on folklore for Daily Express
1893: 20-21Jan: OGD advancement rituals [jk]
1893: 22Jan: to Dublin, then Cork with Hyde [jk]
1893: 27Jan: big fight with Duffy faction [jk]
1893: late Jan-Feb: Blake edition published [jk]
1893: mid-Feb: visit to Sligo [jk]
1893: 04Mar: WBY speaks on Emmet to Griffith and others [jk]
1893: 21Mar: Duffy triumphs in Library battle [jk]
1893: 04May: Tynan marries [jk]
1893: summer? WBY ?loses Clontarf lodgings with O'Leary's cousin. Mrs Carew [anj72]
1893: late May: WBY back to London, much time with OGD [jk]
1893: Jul: WBY lectures TS on 'The Nature of Art and Poetry in Relation to Mysticism' [jk]
1893: 31Jul: Hyde founds Gaelic League [jk]
1893: Aug? WBY reviews Hyde's "Love Songs" in 'Bookman' [review]
1893: 19Aug: WBY's review of Dyer's 'Ghost World' in Speaker [etext]
1893: 29Aug: begins notebook of 'Wind Among the Reeds' poems [jk]
1893: mid-Sept: WBY and Lionel Johnson stay with gay 30yo med student Joseph Patrick Quinn at 56 N Circular road, planning Irish lit magazine [jk]
1893: late Nov: edition of poems of Blake [jk]
1893: Dec: George Pollexfen joins OGD [anj76]
1893: Xmas: WBY's story "Michael Clancy, The Great Dhoul, and Death" in 'Old Country' [etext]
1893: WBY's The Celtic Twilight. Men and Women, Dhouls and Faeries [etext] [info] [biblio]

Joyce may have heard of this at age 11?

WBY c1933 on 'Celtic Twilight': "a bit of ornamental trivial needlework sewn on a prophetic fury got by Blake and Boeheme' [rff163]

1893 poems:
The Moods [txt]
The Cap and Bells [txt]
[31Jun sic] Into the Twilight [txt]
[29Aug] The Hosting of the Sidhe [txt]
The Host of the Air (The Stolen Bride) [txt]

1894? essay 'The Evangel of Folklore' in The Speaker [etext]
1894: 07-?27Feb: WBY visits Verlaine in Paris, stays with Mathers [anj73]
1894: 26Feb: WBY and MaudG see 'Axel' in Paris [mgyb105; anj74]
1894: Mar: starts play 'Shadowy Waters' [jk]
1894: 29Mar-14Apr: WBY's play The Land of Heart's Desire produced in London [mgyb106; anj74] secretly financed by Horniman [bio], opens for Todhunter's flop
1894: 14Apr: LadyG writes in her diary: "At the Morrises I met Yeats, looking every inch a poet." [cite]
1894: 21Apr-12May: 'The Land of Heart's Desire' opens for Shaw's hit 'Arms' [anj74]
1894: Jun: 2nd Book of the Rhymers' Club [jk]
1894: 06Aug: Iseult Gonne born [anj78; rff157]
1894: 10Oct: in Dublin at Quinn's until 25Oct, then Sligo [jk]
1894: Nov-May: WBY stays in Sligo with George Pollexfen [anj76] (visits Gore-Booths at neighboring Lissadell for 1st time)

WBY impresses Moore (in London) [cite], meets Wilde, William Morris

Edward Martyn to George Moore: "I wish I knew enough Irish to write my plays in Irish" Moore: "I thought nobody did anything in Irish but bring turf from the bog and say prayers." [cite]

1894 poems:
The Song of the Old Mother [txt]
The Heart of the Woman [txt]
Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland [txt]

1895: 'The Countess Kathleen' rewritten as 'The Countess Cathleen' [anj77]
1895: 27Feb: WBY begins debate with Dowden in Daily Express about best Irish books [anj79]
1895: Mar: WBY's edition of 'A Book of Irish Verse' [jk]
1895: 13Apr-01May: visits Hyde in Roscommon, conceives 'Castle of Heroes' on 16Apr [jk, mgyb109]

[pic source]

1895: 04May: back to London via Dublin [jk]
1895: 19May: visit to express support for Oscar Wilde in trial [jk]
1895: 16Jul: dating Olivia Shakespear [jk]
1895: Jul-Oct: 4 articles in 'The Bookman' survey Irish lit [anj79]
1895: Aug? WBY's revised collection Poems [jk]
1895: 14Sep: WBY writes 'The Shadowy Horses' for Olivia S [anj82] [etext]
1895: early Oct: WBY moves into Havelock Ellis's [qv] apartment with Symons until March [anj81] (locks self out when Olivia is due, distressed spirit visits Maud in Dublin)
1895: Dec: WBY hopes South American boundary dispute will grow from war between USA and UK to full 'Armageddon' or 'great crisis' [gyL461]

JAJ was 13yo

1895 poems:
A Poet to his Beloved [txt]
He gives his Beloved certain Rhymes [txt]
To Some I have Talked with by the Fire [txt]
[23Aug] The Lover asks Forgiveness because of his Many Moods [txt]
[29Aug] The Everlasting Voices [txt]
[24Sep] He bids his Beloved be at Peace [txt]
[Nov] The Lover speaks to the Hearers of his Songs in Coming Days [txt]
[Dec] He tells of the Perfect Beauty [txt]

1896: 11Jan: first issue of 'Savoy' with 2 poems and a story by WBY
1896: late Feb: WBY gets own rooms, starts affair with Olivia Shakespear [rff158, jk]
1896: Feb? WBY paid £2/week to write novel (6mos) [rff164]

titles: 'The Benizons of the Fixed Stars' (1897), 'The Lilies of the Lord' (1898), 'The Speckled Bird' (1902)
theme: the boy set apart to be an artist [rff175]
hero: Michael DeBurgh/Leroy/Hearne

1896: Aug: tour of west Ireland w/Symons, stay w/Martyn, meets LadyG, vision of female archer

Gogarty claimed Yeats hated Martyn for his Catholicism [rff168]

Symons called LadyG 'La Strega' (the witch) and said that once she put her 'terrible eye' on WBY he was lost to lyric poetry [rff170]

pastel of Coole by WBY?

c1896: WBY's stories of 'Michael Robartes' use AE as model (also Mathers) [anj96]

1896: Dec: WBY visits Paris, experiments with hashish, sees 'Ubu Roi' in first run [quote], metts Synge and urges him to write about Ireland [rff172, mgyb115] [info]

Nov1896-Nov1897 was JAJ's period of religious fervor

1896 poems:
The Travail of Passion [txt]
The Unappeasable Host [txt]
The Valley of the Black Pig [txt]
He remembers Forgotten Beauty [txt]
He reproves the Curlew [txt]
To his Heart, bidding it have no Fear [txt]
He tells of a Valley full of Lovers [txt]
The Secret Rose [txt]

1897: Havelock Ellis's study of homosexuality Sexual Inversion [info]
1897: mid-Jan: return to London [jk]
1897: Jan: MaudG and WBY found Paris branch of Young Ireland [rff173]
1897: Feb: break with Olivia Shakespear over MaudG [rff173]

...She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image was there;
She has gone weeping away. [etext]

1897: Feb: frequent contact with LadyG in London, she begins financial support [rff174]
1897: Apr: WBY experiments with mescaline provided by 38yo Havelock Ellis [rff178]
1897: Apr: WBY's The Secret Rose published after heavy final revisions [jk] (dedicated to AE) [biblio]

the covers for 'Secret Rose' [pix] and 'Wind Among the Reeds' were designed by Althea Gyles, and artschool friend [gyL460]

1897: May: in Sligo; visits Martyn in June [jk]
1897: Jun: separate publication of 'Adoration of the Magi' (and 'Tables of the Law'?) [jk]
1897: 21Jun: MaudG's first speech to Dublin public meeting provokes anti-British riots [rff181]

WBY: "She is now the idol of the mob & deserves to be." [rff181]

1897: Jul: "The Lover Pleads with his Friend for Old Friends" published [gyL49]
1897: late-Jul: WBY (and AE?) spends 2 months at Lady Gregory's estate Coole [pix]
1897: Aug: WBY writes 'Song of Wandering Aengus' [etext]

WBY: "...the most miserable time of my life... tortured by sexual desire and disappointed love... When desire became an unendurable torture, I would masturbate, and that, no matter how moderate I was, would make me ill." [rff182. he was taking hashish pills too.]

1897: Irish Literary Theatre established by WBY, LadyG, and Martyn [history]

"Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it had been represented, but the home of ancient idealism." [more]

Lady Gregory's charming memoir (misdates start to 1898)

changes of identity:
Aug 1897: Celtic Theatre (Yeats, Gregory, Martyn, AE)
Oct 1897: Irish Literary Theatre (less dangerous) (Y, G, M, AE, Moore)
Apr 1902: Irish National Dramatic Society/Company (Fays, Y, G, AE, MaudG)
Jan 1903: Irish National Theatre Society (Y, MaudG, AE, Hyde, Fay, Ryan, Gregory, Colum, Griffith)

1897: 21Oct (or 25Oct?): 73yo Philip Francis Little, former Prime Minister of Newfoundland (and (father of?) future inspiration of 'Where There Is Nothing'?) dies in Dublin [cite]

1897: Nov? to Dublin, then London [jk]
1897: Nov: WBY alienates church by calling Catholicism philistine [rff170] [etext]

LadyG to WBY: "I have longed to turn Catholic, that I might be nearer to the people, but you have taught me that paganism brings me nearer still." [rff170]

1897: Nov-Dec: MaudG raising money in USA (£1000) [rff191]
1897: Dec? Russell leaves drapery store at WBY's insistence, to organise agricultural cooperatives for Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) [rff185]

WBY's top rate of poetry-writing is a half-dozen lines per day [rff182]

1897 poems:
The Blessed [txt]
[Jun?] He mourns for the Change that has come upon him... [txt]
[31Jun sic] The Song of Wandering Aengus [txt]
The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends [txt]

1898: WBY essay in Bookman on "Celtic Beliefs About the Soul" [etext]
1898: long essay for Nineteenth Century on "Prisoners of the Gods" [etext]
1898: long essay for Fortnightly Review on "The Broken Gates of Death" [etext]
1898: 12Jun: MaudG falls out of carriage and breaks arm on way to tribute to Lord Edward Fitzgerald [rff194]
1898: 20Jun: WBY back at Coole

1898: Aleister Crowley drops out of Cambridge, joins Golden Dawn, rises quickly to prominence [bio] Poem:

The end of everything. The veil of night
Is not so deep I cannot comprehend.
I see before me yawn-- a ghastly sight--
The End.

Love long ago deserted me to wend
His way with younger men. Life spreads a blight
Over me now. I have not now one friend.

There is no hope for me; no gleam of light
To my black path will any comfort lend--
Yet will I meet with smiling face, upright
The End. [more]

1898: debate about national drama in Daily Express [info]
1898: 'spiritual marriage' between WBY and Maud Gonne
1898: Dec: LadyG meets MaudG: 'instead of beauty I saw a death's head'

"It is Maud Gonne and the Poet. She has a radiance as of sunlight. Yeats, that leopard of the moon, holds back in a leash a huge lion-colored Great Dane--Maud Gonne's dog, Dagda." [cite]

by 1898 WBY could ask £2 per 1000 words for his journalism

in Sept 1898 JAJ started at University College

1898 poems:
He wishes his Beloved were Dead [txt]
He hears the Cry of the Sedge [txt]
He thinks of those who have Spoken Evil of his beloved [txt]
The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love [txt]
The Fish [txt]
He thinks of his Past Greatness when a Part of the Constellation of Heaven (Mongan...) [txt]
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven [txt]
The Shadowy Waters [txt]

1899? essay for Contemporary Review called "Ireland Bewitched" [etext]
1899: 16Mar: HW Nevinson on WBY: "tall, thin, rather stooping, with long, straight topped head quite black, narrow face, eyes rather close, & the left looking a little outwards: clean shaved, showing blue... talked incessantly, moving his hands a good deal, & sometimes falling into a chant: says 'D'y' see?' every sentence..." [rff207]

1899: Apr: WBY's poems The Wind among the Reeds [etext] [notes] [info] [biblio]
1899: 08May: JAJ sees WBY's Countess Cathleen (and Martyn's Heather Field and Maeve) performed
1899: May: debate about national drama in Daily Express published as book [info]
1899: Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature

JAJ sees play, surely reads poems, almost surely reads debate

WBY on Trinity College: "...turned our once intelligent gentry into readers of The Irish Times." (The Irish Times, with a circulation of about 45,000, vied with the pro-home-rule Freeman's Journal and Evening Telegraph, with circulations of about 40,000 and 26,000, respectively. Conservative papers such as the Daily Express [edited by Longworth, bought reviews from JAJ in 1903] and Evening Herald had small but respectable circulations, as had the broadly non-partisan Daily Independent and Evening Mail.) [cite]

1900: JBY paints WBY [pic]
1900: essay on 'Maeve' in Beltaine [etext]
1900: review of Deeney's "Peasant Lore" in Speaker [review]
1900: essay "Irish Witch Doctors" in Fortnightly Review [etext]
1900: May: Lady Gregory 'comes out' as Irish nationalist [rff169]
1900: WBY's play The Shadowy Waters [etext] ditto ditto ditto [review]
1900: 13Jul: MaudG's sister and cousin join OGD [gyL483]

JAJ wrote his Ibsen articles, and his first play, in 1900

"Crowley's behavior... was too outrageous for most of the London members, who disapproved of his blatant sexual activities. In January of 1900, the Isis-Urania Temple refused to obey an instruction from Mathers to initiate Crowley into the second order, the RR et AC. Mathers was livid. He invited Crowley to Paris and initiated him in that city. The Golden Dawn officers in London rebelled. Mathers threatened to smite the insurgents with a Punitive Current generated by the Hidden and Secret Chiefs. Then he dispatched... Crowley to suppress the rebellion. In the 'Battle of Blythe Road', Crowley was ejected by a constable after he broke into the Order's London quarters (located at 36 Blyth Road). On April 19, Crowley reappeared in Blyth Road...He was clad in a Highland dress, wearing a black mask of Osiris [pix] over his face, and carried a dagger. The rebels got rid of him by again calling the police. Crowley returned to Paris..." [more]

WBY faction: "We did not think a mystical society was intended to be a reformatory" [cite]

Crowley on WBY: "a lank dishevelled demonologist" [rff110]

WBY style shifts from esthete to folk

1900 poems:
The Withering of the Boughs [txt]

1901: Mar-Apr: WBY's "Is the Order of RR∾ to remain a Magical Order?" [rff-xxvii, ygd259-268] [biblio]

"When [a mortal] goes his way to supreme Adeptship, he will go absolutely alone, for men attain to the supreme wisdom in a loneliness that is like the loneliness of death."

1901: WBY at Coole [memoir]
1901: Sep: WBY's essy 'Magic' in Monthly Review [rff579]
1901: Oct: Joyce's "Day of the Rabblement" disses WBY, Moore, and Martyn (Moore's take: "preposterously clever")
1901: late: WBY prmises essays in place of 'Speckled Bird' [ygd105]
1901: WBY and Moore's play Diarmuid and Grania

Moore's literary associates were Russell, Martyn, WBY, Eglinton (aka 'Little John'), Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, John (Jack?) Butler Yeats, Nathaniel Hone [painter], John Pentland Mahaffy (provost of Trinity, knighted 1918), Walter Osborne [painter], John Hughes (sculptor b1864, d1941? ???) [cite]

WBY on Moore ("more mob than man... quite untrustworthy... old lecher") and Martyn ("holy man... woman-hater") [quote] more

1901 poems:
[May] Adam's Curse [txt]
Under the Moon [txt]
[11Aug] Baile and Aillinn [txt]
The Arrow [txt]
The Folly of Being Comforted [txt]

1902: essay 'Away' in Fortnightly Review [etext]
1902: Apr: WBY dictating new version of 'Speckled Bird' to typist [ygd105]
1902: Moore splits with WBY (?), ILT dissolved
1902: WBY and Lady Gregory found Irish National Theatre Society [Abbey]
1902: WBY and Lady Gregory collaborate on Cathleen ni Houlihan [background] [summary] [info] debate [lyric]
1902: Yeats sisters form Dun Emer Press [Bibliofind]
1902: new edition of 'Celtic Twilight' [etext]
1902: Jack B Yeats edits Broadsheet
1902: WBY's play The Pot of Broth

Martyn splits with Irish Revivalism because of dislike of "peasant plays" and "Celtic twilight romanticism."

1902: Oct: Joyce introduces himself to WBY (just back from London), and to Lady Gregory

1902: Nov: play 'Where There Is Nothing' published in United Irishman [biblio]
1902: Nov: poem 'Adam's Curse' published [etext]
1902: Dec: infatuation with Nietzsche [rff584n]
1902? WBY's review of LadyG's "Poets and Dreamers" [review]

1902-3: Joyce in Paris, meets Synge, Symons; meets Gogarty and Eglinton over Xmas back in Dublin

WBY on JAJ: "colossal self-conceit... Lilliputian literary genius" "wrote excellently but had the worst manners" 'best technique of the young Dublin crowd'

JAJ on WBY: "floating will" 'gone over to the rabblement', patronizing in Irish enthusiasm, "too old for me to help you" (contested); 'inspiration fading, replaced by general ideas, folklore, politics'

WBY on his own reputation: "a preacher of reckless opinions and a disturber who carries in his hand the irresponsible torch of vain youth". WBY on AE: "leads an even more reckless rebellion"

JAJ on Theosophists: disaffected Protestants

JAJ to WBY on Wilde: JAJ hoped his deathbed conversion had not been sincere (ie, untrue to self)

In London, Golden Dawn splits between Waite (mysticism) and WBY and Robert Felkin (magic). WBY's faction was called the Stella Matutina, or Morning Star [cite] [FAQ]

Russell, Maud Gonne and several others leave INTS from political objections (WBY wanted it poetic not political); INTS gains Synge, actress Sara Allgood, and patroness Anne Horniman (who demands there be no political slant to their work) [history] [Russell- 1902?]

1902 poems:
[Jun?] The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries... [txt]
[Aug] In the Seven Woods [txt]
[Nov?] The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water [txt]

1903: WBY's plays The Hour Glass and The King's Threshold
1903: WBY's poems In the Seven Woods [etext] [biblio]
1903: WBY's poems "The Old Age of Queen Maeve" [etext] and "Baile and Aillinn" [etext]
1903: WBY's Ideas of Good and Evil (w/o preface about J's visit) [biblio]
1903: May: INTS performs successfully in London
1903: Nov: WBY's US lecture tour

1903 poems:
The Happy Townland [txt]
The Old Age of Queen Maeve [txt]
[Dec?] Old Memory [txt]

1904: Poems [pix]
1904: Beerbohm caricature of WBY and George Moore [pic]
1904: WBY's play On Baile's Strand
1904: WBY's play The King's Threshold
1904: April: Anne Horniman offers Abbey site [info] to Theatre Society
1904: preface to LadyG's "Gods and Fighting Men" [etext]
1904: Aug: Joyce attacks Irish lit in "The Holy Office" [etext]

1904 poems:
The Ragged Wood [txt]

1908: Dec: first sex with Maud

1912: Sep: intro to Tagore book [etext]

1912: 'On Lord Dunsany' [etext]

1917: WBY proposes to Iseult Gonne

no-date: Ezra Pound has affair with Iseult Gonne

1920: 26yo Iseult Gonne marries 18yo Francis Stuart [info] (physically abusive; two children)

gravestone

Auden obit-poem

1999: Ireland's 100 favorite poems include 25 by WBY: [linked] [article]

1999: NY Public Library exhibit of documents [info]

Etexts: prose; collected poems; collected poems; gopher; 1pg selected

Links:

Irish-lit etexts, more, anon folklore

General: short bios, links, [EB] short, Joycean

Links: general

Kennys, microfilm (Holloway, Abbey, Synge)

Library collections: huge

Abbey: tourist, timeline

Superb 1938 profile

Detailed chronology, even more ditto

etexts, etexts, etexts

links, lots, more

Yeats commercial site, poems etext, loose ditto; poems

editing issues

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Ulysses:
chapters: summary : anchors : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12a 12b 13 14a 14b 15a 15b 15c 15d 16a 16b 17a 17b 18a 18b
notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
reference: Bloom : clocktime : prices : schemata : Tower : riddles : errors : Homeric parallels : [B-L Odyssey] : Eolus tropes : parable : Oxen : Circe : 1904 : Thom's : Gold Cup : Seaside Girls : M'appari : acatalectic : search
riddles: overview : Rudy : condom : Gerty : Hades : Strand : murder : Eccles
maps: Ulysses : WRocks : Strand : VR tour : aerial tour : Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe
editing: etexts : lapses : Gabler : capitals : commas : compounds : deletes : punct : typists
drafts: prequel : Proteus : Cyclops : Circe
closereadings: notes : Oxen : Circe

Finnegans Wake:
txt: [I.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 II.1 2 3 4 III.1 2 3 4 IV] : [HTML]
shorter: main : I.1-4 : 5-8 : II.1-2 : 3-4 : III.1-2 : 3 : 4 : IV
reference: thunder : Quinet : waves : [MP3 ALP] : FrALP : ItalALP : ch4 digest : Finn's Hotel : JAJquotes : search
drafts: NewGame : ROC : Kev : B&P; : T&I; : HCE : Mmlj : Cad : Rev : Pacata
closereadings: notes : ROC : T&S; : Kev : B&P; : T&I; : HCE : Mmlj : Cad
theory: AI : archetypes : WakeOS : notes : origin : Scribble

Portrait:
ref: main : ch1 : ch1 notes : ch2 : 3 : 4 : 5a : 5b : Pinamonti : [notes] : [Cave] : [Gabler]

SHero: outline : quotes : PoA04

Dubliners:
etexts: Sis : Sis04 : Sis05 : Enc : Araby : Evel : After : 2Gall : Board : LitCl : Cntr : Clay : Pain : Ivy : Moth : Grace : Dead
guides: main : [Cave] : [Peng]

Other:
Exiles: Ex1 : 2 : 3

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