George's ghosts

a new life of W.B. Yeats

By Brenda Maddox

1999

First Published

3.84

Average Rating

474

Number of Pages

14H28M

Audio Length

William Butter Yeats, who some critics feel was the greatest English language poet of our century, led a life of many contradictions. He was Ireland's most revered writer and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But in his private life, Yeats struggled with passionate, if unrequited, relationships with women and was haunted by the spirits of his ancestors. Renowned biographer Brenda Maddox examines the poet's life through the prism of his personal obsession with the supernatural and otherworldly. She considers for the first time the Automatic Script, the trancelike communication with supposed spirits that he and his much younger wife. Georgie, conducted during the early years of their marriage. Writing with edge, wit, and energy, she finds the essential clues to Yeats' life and work in his unusual relationships with women, most particularly Maude and Iseult Gonne, his wife Georgie, and his rarely discussed mother.

Avg Rating

3.84

Number of Ratings

103

5 STARS

27%

4 STARS

41%

3 STARS

22%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Brenda Maddox

Author · 10 books

Born in Brockton, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1932, Brenda Lee Power Murphy graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature and also studied at the London School of Economics. She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D.H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Rosalind Franklin have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize. Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales, where she and her husband, Sir John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren. Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2016. (from Wikipedia)