William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland in 1865. He did not distinguish himself academically at a young age, but in high school, the young Yeats began to write and publish poetry. Yeats became known as a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry in 1923, though his greatest works, The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929), were published in the years after he received this distinction. Later in life, Yeats also served as an Irish senator. He is today considered one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century.