W. B. Yeats, A Life I

In this acclaimed new biography, Roy Foster describes Yeats's progress from childhood through a bohemian life of love-affairs, artistic development, and political involvements, to his 50th year. Drawing on a great archive of personal and contemporary material, Foster charts the growth of a poet's mind and of an astonishing personality, both of which were instrumental in the formation of a new and radicalized Irish nationalist identity.