William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. Yeats was born in Dublin to an affluent family. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and later studied poetry in London. His earliest works, such as The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), were heavily influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Celtic Revival. He later moved away from this style and developed a more modernist aesthetic. His most famous works include The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929), and The Wild Swans at Coole (1917). Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for his "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He died in 1939 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.
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