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1865-1939: You can’t visit Ireland without experiencing Yeats!
1865-1939: You can’t visit Ireland without experiencing Yeats!
W B Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the ‘sedentary toil’ of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939.
Cathy from 746 books gives the tour:
Lissadell House was the childhood home of Constance Gore-Booth, later Constance Markiewicz and as a child, William Butler Yeats visited Lissadell for cricket matches and horse racing; and as a young man the poet made friends with the Gore-Booth sisters Constance and Eva, and often stayed at Lissadell during the years 1893-1895. Eva created a Sligo branch of the Irish Women’s Suffrage, which was where Lissadell was situated while Constance Markiewicz was an Irish National Revolutionary, and became the first female elected to the British House of Commons; although as a member of Sinn Fein she would not accept the seat. She was sentenced to death after the Easter Rising of 1916, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment – following a public outcry both in Britain and Ireland – because she was a woman. The sisters died within one year of each other in 1926 and 1927.
The Yeats Memorial Building is centrally located on Hyde Bridge, in Sligo Town Centre. This beautiful building is the home of the Yeats Society, Sligo who run the Yeats International Summer School every summer.
Author/Guide: WB Yeats Destination: Ireland, Sligo Departure Time: 1865-1939
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