Yeats treasures to go on display in National Library

PRICELESS family treasures belonging to William Butler Yeats were handed over to the National Library of Ireland yesterday for its first major exhibitionon the Nobel prize-winning poet.

The hoard includes poems, portraits and a precious Japanese sword given to Yeats during a lecture tour of the US in 1920.

The material will be given to the library on loan by Yeats’s son Michael for the forthcoming exhibition, Yeats: the life and works of William Butler Yeats, due to open later this year.

“This will be the first major exhibition developed by the National Library on the great poet and we are indebted to the Yeats family for their support,” said National Library director Aongus Ó hAonghusa.

“It will draw on a wide range of Yeatsian scholarship and will attempt to engage with all the major aspects of Yeats’s life and works to give a comprehensive view of him.”

The family material will feature an illuminated copy of the Lake Isle of Innisfree, printed by Yeats’s sister Elizabeth, and portraits of Yeats’s wife George by artists Edmund Dulac and John Butler Yeats.

The Japanese sword being donated was described in Yeats’s poem Meditations in Time of Civil War.

The artifacts will augment the library’s permanent collection of Yeats manuscripts and books donated by the family over many years, including manuscripts or early printed versions of most of Yeats’s best-known poems.

The material being assembled for the exhibition will also include previously unseen pictures of Yeats and Maud Gonne on loan from Anna White, grand- daughter of Maud Gonne.