W.B. Yeats: A Life, vol. 1, The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914.

From: The Nation | Date: May 12, 1997| Author: | Copyright information

R.F. Foster transforms the popular image of the young poet from a dreamy "Wandering Aengus" sort of gent to that of an ambitious self-promoter who hid his shyness behind a fusillade of bombast. (Foster leaves no romantic images intact: He even ascribes Yeats's much-noted "misty gaze" to a conical cornea.) Foster also deepens our understanding of Yeats's feelings about his Anglo-Irish background (proud); his attitudes toward nationalism (conflicted); his relationship with Maud Gonne (toxic); and his leadership of the Irish Theatre movement (tyrannical). But perhaps Foster's most ...

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BOOKS: THE SEXED-UP SENATOR Yeats was firing on all cylinders almost to the last. Mark Bostridge marvels at the culmination of a majestic biography; W B Yeats: A Life II: The Arch-Poet By R F Foster OXFORD pounds 30 pounds 26 (+ pounds 2.25 P&P PER ORDER) 0870 800 1122
; ...final volume of R F Foster's biography of W B Yeats opens in 1915, in...to have "achieved Yeats". Yet, as Roy Foster sets out to discover, Yeats's remaining quarter...Most biographies of Yeats are about what he wrote, says Foster, this one is about...
R. F. Foster. The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939.(Book Review)
; R. F. Foster. The Arch-Poet...Vol 2 of W. B. Yeats: A Life. New York...who ever lived, Yeats's life story is...compelling, and Foster has documented...his later years. Foster is convinced that...Pound gave her that Yeats adopted, was not...
What was lost: can a biography of W. B. Yeats rely on historical fact alone?(Book Review)
; ...sits down to breakfast. Foster, however, joins Yeats at the breakfast table...Positivist by temperament, Foster does not intuit, as Yeats did, events for which...producible evidence; Foster's imagination, unlike Yeats's, is insistently Greek...
A life like a novel.(W. B. Yeats: a Life Volume II: The Arch-poet 1915-1939)(Book Review)
; R.F. FOSTER W. B. Yeats: a Life Volume II: The Arch-poet...will be seventeen next month. YEATS: Oh, will he? And Foster has even found out the amazing...he and George were living in, Foster tells us Yeats's motivation: with a heavily pregnant...
Poetry and Politics.(W. B. Yeats: A Life)(Book Review)
; ...most famous Protestants--Foster has rewritten history again. W. B. Yeats: A Life (824 pages. Oxford...published six years ago, Foster details Yeats's struggle to promote...non-Catholic Irish identity. Foster shows how Yeats's belief in history as...
Simply Yeats; Literary biography I.("W.B.Yeats: A Life (Volume II, The Arch-Poet)")(Book Review)
; ...from those who knew Yeats a lot, a little and...points between, Roy Foster's two-volume biography...as its telling. Mr Foster takes up the story in 1915. Yeats is 50 years old...to the occult as Yeats did himself. Mr Foster, once again, manages...
Why Yeats matters.
; ...its author, R.F. Foster, 17 years to write: Is Yeats _ is any poet...times while reading Foster's fascinatingly detailed account of Yeats' life when I marveled...skillfully. As Foster told an interviewer for the Guardian, Yeats was not a loony...
Why Yeats matters.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
; ...its author, R.F. Foster, 17 years to write: Is Yeats _ is any poet...times while reading Foster's fascinatingly detailed account of Yeats' life when I marveled...skillfully. As Foster told an interviewer for the Guardian, Yeats was not a loony...
Books: The politics of a poet Conor Cruise O'Brien hails the first volume of what promises to be the definitive life of Yeats
; ...definitive Life of Yeats. Even as it stands...master work. Roy Foster is a first-class...nationalism, the young Yeats was also drawn to...With great insight, Foster has been the first...following year, 1896, Foster says that Yeats now "effortlessly...
W.B. Yeats: Volume One.
; W.B. YEATS: VOLUME ONE. By R.F. Foster. Oxford; 672 pages; K25...of the ridiculous. Mr Foster at once explodes the...image constructed by Yeats himself and builds a...pining for Maud Gonne, Mr Foster's Yeats is something of a tease...