Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W.B. Yeats

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 2nd Printing. Large octavo with black boards and orange pictorial jacket; xxi, 808 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates: illustrations; index; 24 cm Near fine in very good jacket; mildly worn at head and foot of spine; now in archival mylar. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780198112327, 0198112327

"'I, the poet William Yeats ... Restored this tower for my wife George' claims the lovely six-line poem in which Yeats dedicates the renovation of Thoor Ballylee. But the poem's truth conceals another, and different truth - that they worked together at the restoration, and it was largely her vision and hands that created a dwelling from the former ruins. Just how symbolic this is, of the close but largely hidden collaboration between them, is revealed by this deeply-researched life of George Yeats - the first full-scale biography of a woman of remarkable gifts and generous self concealment. [...]For the first time, this woman is allowed to take centre stage. Drawing on memoirs and a wealth of unknown and unpublished sources, this biography by the distinguished scholar Ann Saddlemyer reveals someone much more significant than just 'Mrs. W.B. Yeats' - a personality at once visionary and practical, and an important figure in twentieth-century literary history."--Jacket.

Contents: List of Illustrations; Family Tree; Introduction; Prelude - Ballylee, August 1923; I. PROGRESSIONS 1892-1918; 1. Ancestry; 2. Childhood; 3. Friends; 4. Studies; 5. The Golden Dawn; 6. Forest Row; 7. London, Oxford, and Dublin; II. CONJUNCTIONS 1919-1921; 8. Coole; 9. Anne; 10. Oxford and New York; 11. Michael; III. DIRECTIONS 1922-1928; 12. Ballylee; 13. Merrion Square; 14. Dublin; IV. TRANSITS 1929-1939; 15. Rapallo; 16. Fitzwilliam Square; 17. Riversdale; 18. Majorca; 19. Menton; V. MAPPING; 20. Palmerston Road; 21. Seekers and Friends; 22. Postlude: Odysseys; The Death of William Gilbert Hyde Lees; Abbreviations; Notes; Index.