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SUMMARY: W. B. Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) Irish poet and dramatist.
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William Butler Yeats was a Nobel Prize winning Irish dramatist, author and poet who was best known for writing “The Celtic Twilight”. Yeats’ works focus heavily on Irish mythology and history. He never was able to fully embrace his Protestant past nor did he join the majority of Ireland’s Roman Catholics. He also devoted much of his life to study in a myriad of other subjects including theosophy, mysticism, spiritualism, and the Kabbalah.

William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in the seaside village of Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen was the daughter of a wealthy family from County Sligo. William’s father John Butler Yeats was studying to become a lawyer at the time of his marriage but soon gave that up to follow his dreams of becoming an artist, of which he became a well known portrait painter.

At a young age William was already reading Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, John Donne and the works of William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These books were recommended by his father and inspiration for his own creativity, but fellow Irish poets Standish James O’Grady and Sir William Ferguson were perhaps the most influential. Yeats became a devoted patriot and found his voice to speak out against the harsh Nationalist policies of the time. His early dramatic works convey his deep respect for the Irish legend and fascination with the occult, while his later works take on a more poetical and experimental aspect. Yeats spent most of his life between Sligo, Dublin, and London, but his profound influence to future poets and playwrights and theatre, music and film can be seen the world over.

Yeat’s mother Susan was the first to introduce him and his two sisters Susan Mary and Elizabeth Corbet to the Irish folktales he would grow to love so much. His younger brother Jack Butler Yeats would follow in his father’s footsteps and also become an accomplished artist. When William was just two years old his father decided to move the family to London, England to study art. There William attended the Godolphin School in Hammersmith to begin his education before the family moved back to Dublin. Once back in Dublin William attended Erasmus Smith High School and spent much of his time at his father’s nearby art studio. Pursuing his own interests in the arts, in 1884 he decided to enroll in the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin for two years, during which some of his first poems were printed in the Dublin University Review.

The Yeats were now living in London in Bedford Park and their home was the lively gathering place for their many writer and artist friends to discuss politics, religion, literature, and art. It was at this time that he also met many of the other up-and-coming authors and poets of his generation.

In 1903, as a successful poet and playwright now, Yeats went on his first lecture tour of the United States, and would repeat the tour again in 1914, 1920, and 1932. Yeats and his sisters joined forces and started the Cuala Press in 1904, which would print continuously until it closed in 1946.
In 1911 at the age of forty-six, Yeats met Georgie Hyde Lees and they married on October 20, 1917. They had two children; Anne, born in 1919 and for whom he wrote the well known poem “A Prayer for My Daughter” and a son Michael was born on August 22, 1921, for whom Yeats wrote “A Prayer for My Son”.

William Butler Yeats died, on January 28, 1939, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France he was seventy-three years old. . He was first buried there then as were his wishes, in then 1948 re-interred in Drumcliff churchyard, County Sligo, Ireland.

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SUMMARY: Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner,
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While Victor Hugo does not have the largest resume of writing he is considered to be one of the most important French Romantic writers. He was a novelist, poet and dramatist and some of his best known works are “The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables.

Victor Hugo was born in Besancon, France on February 26, 1802. He was a sickly infant who barely survived birth and was only kept alive by the devotion of his mother. His father was an army general, who taught young Victor to admire Napoleon as a hero. After his parents separated he was raised and educated in Paris by his mother, where the family settled when Hugo was two. From 1815 to 1818 Hugo attended the Lycee Louis-le Grand in Paris. He began his writing career early by writing tragedies and poetry, and translated Virgil. Hugo’s first collection of poems, Odes Et Poesies Diverses was so well received that it gained him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. As a novelist Hugo made his debut with Han D’Islande in 1823 followed by Bug-Jargal in 1826. In 1822 Hugo married Adele Foucher. She was the daughter of an officer at the ministry of war and historical experts state that she was Victor’s cousin. They had 5 children: Leopold, Leopoldine, Charles, Francois-Victor and Adele.

Hugo gained wider fame with his play “Hernani” written in 1830 and with his famous historical work “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” written in 1831 which became an instant success. Since The Hunchback’s appearance in 1831 the story has became part of popular culture. The novel which is set in 15th century Paris, tells a moving story of a gypsy girl Esmeralda and the deformed bell ringer, Quasimodo, who loves her.

In the 1830s Hugo also published several volumes of lyric poetry. Hugo’s lyrical style was rich, intense and full of powerful sounds and rhythms, and although it followed the popular taste of the period it also had bitter personal tones.

In his later life Hugo became heavily involved in politics as a supporter of the republican form of government. After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was finally elected in 1841 to the Academie Francaise. This political triumph was shadowed by the death of Hugo’s daughter Leopoldine in 1843. It was only after a decade that Hugo began again publishing books. He devoted himself to politics, with his emphasis on advocating social justice. He continued to serve in political office and after the 1848 revolution, with the formation of the Second Republic, Hugo was then elected to the Constitutional Assembly and to the Legislative Assembly.

When the coup by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) took place in 1851, Hugo then believed his life to be in danger. He fled with his family to Brussels and then to Jersey and Guernsey along the English Channel. Hugo’s partly voluntary exile was to last nearly 20 years. During this time period he wrote at Hauteville House some his best works, including Les Chatimets in 1853 and Les Miserables in 1862, which has become the epic story about social injustice.

The political upheaval that continued in France and the proclamation of the Third Republic made Hugo decide to return to France. During the time period of the Paris Commune, Hugo decided to live in Brussels, until he was expelled for sheltering defeated revolutionaries. He then moved to Luxemburg but after a short time of living as a refuge he returned to Paris and was elected senator. His later years were marred by the loss of his daughter, wife and mistress and the need to commit his daughter Adele to an insane asylum. Victor Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885 from an infection. He was given a national funeral, which was attended by two million people, and buried in the Pantheon.

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SUMMARY: Truman Capote (30 September 1924 – 25 August 1984) American novelist, playwright
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Truman Capote was an American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. He gained international fame with his “nonfiction novel” “In Cold Blood” which is an account of a real life crime in which an entire family was murdered by two sociopaths.

Truman was born in New Orleans. His father was a salesman and his mother 16-year-old beauty queen, Lillie Mae Faulk. His father, Archulus Persons, worked as a clerk for a steamboat company. Persons was never able to hold any job for long, and was always leaving home in search of new opportunities. This led to an unhappy marriage which gradually disintegrated. When Capote was only four, his parents divorced.

Truman spent his youth in Monroeville, Alabama. He lived many years with his relatives, one of whom became the model for the loving, elderly spinster of the author’s novels, stories, and plays. Truman’s contact with his mother, Lillie Mae, was limited she often wrote letters and telephoned her son, crying that she had no money and no husband.

When Capote’s mother married again, this time to a well-to-do businessman, Truman moved to New York, and adopted his stepfather’s surname. He attended the Trinity School and St. John’s Academy in New York, and the public schools of Greenwich, Connecticut. At the age of seventeen, Capote chose to end his formal schooling. He was able to find work at the New Yorker, where he attracted attention with his eccentric style of dress.

Capote’s early stories were published in many quality magazines and in 1946 he won the O.Henry award. During this time Capote established his fame among the cultural circles as the thin voiced, promising young writer, who could brighten up parties with his sharp and clever remarks.

During the next year Truman went to Europe, where he wrote fiction and non-fiction. Among his major works at the time was a profile of Marlon Brando. Following return to the United States in 1958, Truman wrote “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Truman’s increasing preoccupation with journalism formed the basis for his bestseller “In Cold Blood”, a pioneering work of documentary novel or “nonfiction novel”. The work started from an article in The New York Times. The research work and writing of the book took six years to finish. Truman used neither a tape recorder nor note pad, but emptied his interviews and impressions into notebooks at the end of his day

Truman continued to write but problems with drink and drugs, and disputes with other writers, such as Gore Vidal, exhausted Capote’s creative energies. In interviews, Truman’s habit of giving negative anecdotes about the people he knew distanced him from his friends.

Truman lived the life of an open homosexual and was known for his eccentric ways. On November 28th, 1966, he threw one of the most spectacular bashes in the history of New York, the Black and White Ball which was held at the Plaza Hotel. The ball was given in honor of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, who was then the most powerful woman in the country. The gala celebration began at ten and went until breakfast the following morning. Approximately five hundred people from the most stellar reaches of society were invited and were given a precise dress code. Men were expected in black tie, with black mask; women in black or white dress with a white mask, plus a fan. The blowout created front page news all over the country.

Truman Capote died in Los Angeles, California, on August 26, 1984, of liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication. His life and work have inspired numerous books and movies about him.

Filed Under: Biography

SUMMARY: T. S. Eliot (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) American poet, dramatist, literary critic.
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Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, to an old and prominent New England family. His father, Henry Ware Eliot was a successful businessman, who was president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis; his mother, who was born Charlotte Champe Stearns wrote poems and was also a social worker. Eliot was the last of his parents six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born.

He went on to become a poet, dramist and literary critic. He was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford. It was during his years at Harvard that his poems were first published. He also spent an influential year in Paris at the Sorbonne and much of this time influenced his later writings. He went on to settle in England in 1914 at the age of 25. While there he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and eventually a literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber. He later became a director there. He founded Criterion which became an exclusive and influential literary journal during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939). In 1927, at the age of 39 Eliot decided to become a British citizen and about the same time he entered the Anglican Church. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948

While in England he was introduced to Cambridge governess Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Eliot was not happy studying at Merton and declined a second year there. Instead on June 26, 1915, he married Vivienne in a register office. After a short visit, without his new wife, to the U. S. to see his family, he returned to London and took a few teaching jobs such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He continued to work on his dissertation and in 1916, sent it to Harvard, which accepted it. Yet because he did not appear in person to defend his dissertation, however, he was not awarded his PhD.

His marriage to Vivienne was not a happy one and by 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he quickly accepted, leaving Vivien in England. When he returned in 1933, Eliot officially separated from Vivienne. He managed to avoid all but one meeting with his wife between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne died at Northumberland House, a mental hospital north of London, after she was committed in 1938.

Eliot’s second marriage was short but much happier. He married Esme Valerie Fletcher on January 10, 1957. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Miss Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary since August 1949. The wedding was kept a secret to preserve his privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6:15 a.m. with virtually no one other than his wife’s parents in attendance. Valerie was 37 years younger than her famous husband. After Eliot’s death she dedicated her time to preserving his legacy.

Eliot is considered to be one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. He followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such a representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry. Despite this difficulty in his writing his influence on modern poetic diction has been immense.

T.S. Eliot died on January 4, 1965 of emphysema in London. He had suffered with health problems for many years owing to the combination of London air and his heavy smoking, and was often being laid low with bronchitis or tachycardia. His body was then cremated and, according to Eliot’s wishes, the ashes were then taken to St Michael’s Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot’s ancestors emigrated to America. There only a simple plaque commemorates him.

A list of T.S. Eliot works include:

• Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
• Preludes (1917)
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• Poems (1920)
• Gerontion
• Sweeney Among the Nightingales
• The Waste Land (1922)
• The Hollow Men (1925)
• Ariel Poems (1927-1954)
• The Journey of the Magi (1927)
• Ash Wednesday (1930)
• Coriolan (1931)
• Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Plays
• Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934)
• The Rock (1934)
• Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
• The Family Reunion (1939)
• The Cocktail Party (1949)
• The Confidential Clerk (1953)
• The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959)

Nonfiction
• The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920)
• The Second-Order Mind (1920)
• “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1920)
• Homage to John Dryden (1924)
• Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928)
• For Lancelot Andrewes (1928)
• Dante (1929)
• Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932)
• The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
• After Strange Gods (1934)
• Elizabethan Essays (1934)
• Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
• The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
• Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
• Poetry and Drama (1951)
• The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
• “The Frontiers of Criticism” (1956)
• On Poetry and Poets (1957)

Posthumous publications
• To Criticize the Critic (1965)
• The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974)
• Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 1996

Filed Under: Biography

SUMMARY: Soren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) Danish philosopher and theologian
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Soren Aabye Kierkegaard was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “Golden Age” of intellectual and artistic activity. He was born in 1813 and his extensive body of work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. He is known as the “father of existentialism.”

Kierkegaard led a somewhat quiet and uneventful life. He rarely left his hometown of Copenhagen and traveled abroad only five times. He went four times to Berlin and once to Sweden. Historical records of his life show that his prime recreational activities were attending the theatre, walking the streets of Copenhagen to chat with ordinary people, and taking brief carriage jaunts into the surrounding countryside. He received a priviledged education and was educated at a prestigious boys’ school (Borgerdydskolen), then attended Copenhagen University where he studied philosophy and theology.

Søren Kierkegaard was born into an affluent family in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. His mother, Ane Sorensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, had served as a maid in the household before marrying Soren’s father. She is recorded as an unassuming figure: quiet, plain, and not formally educated. She is not directly referred to in Kierkegaard’s books, although she greatly affected his later writings. His mother died on July 31, 1834, at age 66. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was known as a melancholic, anxious, deeply pious, and fiercely intelligent man. He was convinced that he had earned God’s wrath which led him to believe that none of his children would live past the age attained by Jesus Christ,(33). He believed that his personal sins, such as cursing the name of God in his youth and possibly impregnating Ane out of wedlock, necessitated his continued punishment. Though many of his seven children died young, his prediction was disproved when two of them lived past 33 years old: Soren and Peter Christian Kierkegaard, (who became a Lutheran bishop and was several years Soren’s senior). This early introduction to the notion of sin and its connection from father and son was to lay the foundation for much of Kierkegaard’s work. Despite his father’s occasional religious melancholy and obsessions, Kierkegaard and his father shared a close bond. He encouraged Soren to explore his imagination. Kierkegaard’s father died on August 9, 1838 at the age of 82. Shortly before his death, he asked Søren to become a pastor. Søren was deeply influenced by his father’s religious experiences and felt obligated to fulfill his wish.

Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, where he excelled in both Latin and history. In 1830, he went on to the University of Copenhagen to study theology, but while there he was drawn more towards philosophy and literature. Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, which was found by the university panel to be a noteworthy and well-thought out work, but a little too wordy and literary for a philosophy thesis. Kierkegaard graduated on October 20, 1841 with a Magister Artium, which in today’s academic world would be designated as a Ph.D. With his family’s extensive inheritance Kierkegaard was able to fund his education, his living, and several publications of his early works.

Kierkegaard met the love of his life Regine Olsen on May 8, 1837. She became a muse for his work and his subsequent broken engagment to her was generally considered to have had a major influence on his work. Kierkegaard formally proposed to Regine on September 8, 1840. However, Kierkegaard soon felt disillusioned and melancholic about the prospect of marriage. On August 11, 1841 he broke off his engagement. He stated purblicly that he believed that his “melancholy” made him unsuitable for marriage, but his precise motive for ending the engagement remains unclear. It is generally believed that the two remained deeply in love, perhaps even after Regine married Johan Frederik Schlegel. Their contact was limited to chance meetings on the streets of Copenhagen. Some years later, Kierkegaard did go as far as to ask Regine’s husband for permission to speak with her, but Schlegel refused.

Kierkegaard died November 11, 1855 in Copenhagen leaving behind on of the most proflic bodies of work to have ever been written

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SUMMARY: Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894) Scotland novelist, poet, travel writer
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Robert Louis Stevenson was a diverse Scottish writer who authored a number of books, essays, poems, and children’s books. He is best known for such action books such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

Early life and education
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a prominent lighthouse engineer. As a child, Stevenson had tuberculosis and weakened lungs as a result.

When he was 17, he began college to study engineering, like his father. However, he soon determined that engineering was not something he was interested in. His father took him on a sea voyage, presumably to help him become interested in lighthouses. However, the voyage inspired him to want to write adventures about the coast and islands and instead decided to pursue a career in literature. His father eventually allowed this, but made him get a law degree too. He passed the bar exam at the age of 25.

Travels
After college, he began to travel abroad to find a climate that would agree better with his condition. He wrote about his travels in some of his earlier writings, including An Inland Voyage in 1878 and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes in 1879.

In 1876, Stevenson met his wife in France. However, she was married at the time. She returned to California a few months later, and he followed her. In 1879 he traveled from New York to California, where he met up with and married his wife Frances Obsourne, who was divorced by this time. He spent the last five years of his life in Samoa, before dying in Samoa in December of 1894.

Writing
Stevenson was a diverse author and wrote a wide range of things, from poems to children’s books to novels. He is perhaps most famous for his adventure novels and stories, many of which include shipwrecks, stolen inheritances, and other such excitement. In 1883 Treasure Island was published, about a young boy who travels with pirates in search of buried treasure. In 1886, both The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped were published, then The Black Arrow in 1888 and the Master of the Ballantrae in 1889. These were his most famous adventure stories.

He also wrote essays and criticisms, which were also very well-received. These include Virginibus Puerisque (1881), Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), and Memories and Portraits (1887). In addition to this, he wrote a number of travel pieces based on his own adventures and travels. These include The Silverado Squatters (1883), which recounts his visit to a mining camp in California, as well as Across the Plains (1892) and In the South Seas (1896).

In addition to this, he also wrote poetry for children. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) is perhaps his most famous, even today. Other poetry collections include Underwoods (1887) and Ballads (1890). He also wrote a number of short stories that were published in his books The New Arabian Nights (1882) and Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893).

Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, was also a writer. Together, the two collaborated and wrote the novels The Wrong Box (1891) and The Wrecker (1892).

Robert Louis Stevenson was a gifted writer who authored a wide range of books, poems, and literary works that are still enjoyed today.

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