R. F. Foster: W. B. Yeats: A Life - II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939. / John S. Kelly: A W. B. Yeats Chronology.

• Klaus Peter S. Jochum

Foster’s book is the second and last volume of his massive Yeats biography, comprising altogether more than 1400 pages; the first volume, subtitled The Apprentice Mage, was published in 1997. It is, as the author insists, an authorized, not in any sense an official biography. Although Foster has had the full support of the Yeats family and many other people, he was at liberty to present his subject in his own way; the result is a very readable and convincing portrait of a controversial, admirable, often generous, but not always lovable man and poet, whose contribution to the shaping of modern Ireland was inestimable and whose influence on 20th-century poetry in English has been pervasive.

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