William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, one of the most significant figures in 20th-century literature. A key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, he co-founded the Abbey Theatre and served as its chief in its early years. He was honoured with a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and later served as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

Born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, Yeats began engaging with poetry and Irish legends from an early age, inspired by the likes of John Keats, William Wordsworth, and William Blake. His early works show influences from Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with his first volume of verse published in 1889. His poetry evolved to become more physical, realistic, and politicised post-1900, moving away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth yet maintaining a fascination with cyclical theories of life.

Among his major works are The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), Deirdre (1907), The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928), and Last Poems and Plays (1940).