To receive award-winning fiction from me each month, become a fiction patron on Patreon (just £3 a month).įor the world's more full of weeping than he can understand. Estimates vary as to the actual number of children stolen by the Nazis, but according to the German paper. In A Life Before This One, it leads to an almighty clash between father and son. William Butler Yeats - The Stolen Child lyrics. His father's very chocolate-box, very English Victoriana, was the antithesis of what he was trying to achieve as a poet.Īnd indeed what JB was trying to achieve as an artist. ![]() If that's right, this interpretation is unlikely to have pleased Willie, who based his poem on sinister Irish folklore about changelings. Yeats poem “The Stolen Child”, written in 1886, and reproduced below. This print represents a rare – possibly unique – example of this part of JB Yeats' oeuvre and, according to his biographer, William Murphy in Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, it is possibly inspired by the W.B. (If you'd like to read it, you can sign up to become a fiction patron here) The Stolen Child Print This piece is based on an Irish legend about faeries taking children. The story of the family's move from Dublin to London is core to this first book in my Yeats-Gonne series, available to my new fiction patrons in February 2022. 68 William Butler Yeats Irish Legend in the Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats Octoby Essay Writer The Stolen Child In 1886, William Butler Yeats constructed the timeless piece called The Stolen Child. ![]() His wife, Susan Yeats (née Pollexfen), had resented the plan from the start, and at this time was retreating into silent depression, with worse to come. It was a painful time for him, as he realized his long-held dream of supporting his family as an artist would not work out. He submitted woodcuts and drawings to such publishing firms as Atalanta, Cassell’s, Harper’s and the Tract Society, but a distinct lack of marketing skills resulted in few of his works selling. JB or Johnny Yeats was brought up in a strict protestant evangelical tradition but became a sceptical positivist.Ī failed portrait painter but a successful conversationalist and talking head, with highly developed opinions on art and literature, England and Ireland, in particular, JB was the foil against which his son sharpened his mystical spiritual beliefs and literary ideals.Īt the time when he completed this sketch, JB Yeats had left Dublin, where he was struggling to support his family on the unreliable income of a portrait painter, for London, where he was going to attempt making a living doing illustration work. It is one of a few illustrations JB ever succeeded in placing. We know this because somebody crossed out JB’s name and address, 58 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court (the Yeats’ family address up to mid-87) and replaced it with 3 Blenheim Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick (the address to which they moved) ![]() He did this illustration for Atalanta magazine, c. It fetched €6,400, which is rather ironic, as poor JB found it hard to sell his work at any price in his lifetime. In researching the prologue to my Yeats-Gonne series, which is told from the point of view of the fathers of WB Yeats and Maud Gonne, I came across the above black-and white-print by JB Yeats, sold at Whytes Gallery auction recently.
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