William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th-Century English-language poetry, drama, and literature. Yeats (1865-1939) is best known for his poetry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, the first Irish writer so honored.

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, studying poetry in his youth. From an early age he was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of poetry was published in 1889. Yeats was also an important figure in the Irish Literary Revival, and a fervent Irish nationalist as well.