W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature and remains one of Ireland’s most influential poets and playwrights.  Born in 1865 in Sandymount, County, he spent his childhood in the rugged countryside of County Sligo, and in the cities of Dublin and London.  Together with the philanthropist and folklore collector Lady Augusta Gregory, Yeats founded the first Irish national theater in 1899 and ignited the Irish Literary Revival.  Yeats was elected to the first Irish Senate in 1922 and was awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry in 1937.  He died in Roquebrune, France, in 1939.