211515150
After the death of Algernon Swinburne in April 1909 Yeats announced to his sister that he was now 'King of the Cats'. Yet he was far less sure of himself than this boast suggests. This volume tracks Yeats's unrelenting but often agonised attempts to redefine his positon as a poet in a time of aesthetic and personal transition and uncertainty.
It would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of this project to studies in Yeats and Ango-Irish literature. Most of the letters in this volume have never before been published and none have had the benefit of such extraordinarily careful and detailed scholarly examination. Certainly the hurrahs that greeted the arrival of the first volume may justifiably be repeated for this one.
