W. B. Yeats

Mythologies gathers together W. B. Yeats’s folklore and early fictions, edited according to his final textual instructions. These articles and stories present popular tales, personal recollections, legends, poetic history, and mystical occultism. The landscape and culture of Ireland and its people are brought to life in stories that range from ancient times to late-nineteenth-century Dublin and rural Ireland, conveying both Yeats’s passionate nationalism and his fascination with symbolism.

The editors’ introduction situates these works within Yeats’s evolving conceptions of folklore, popular beliefs, myth, and occult philosophy: the collective ‘matrix out of which everything has come’. Particular attention is given to his role in transmitting Ireland’s oral culture and his lifelong effort to reconcile personal vision and artistic creation with the shared imagination and traditions of the community. Originally written in the 1890s, the stories were revised over the years, often significantly. Gould and Toomey set out their editorial principles clearly and trace the complex history of publication and revision, with substantial appendices that document abandoned variants and Yeats’s rearrangements, offering unprecedented insight these works.

The annotations in particular reveal Yeats’s strategies of self-allusion and the special role of these early writings in relation to his poetry, drama, autobiography, and philosophy. Mythologies emerges as crucial for understanding his practice of continual revision and self-mythologising. Essential for scholars and students of Yeats, Irish literature, and modernism, this edition restores Mythologies to its central place in Yeats studies.

This second edition, revised for Open Book Publishers by Neil Mann, corrects errata and brings references up to date.