Adams, Hazard. Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision. Cornell University Press, 1955. Compares Yeats to one of his most important precursors.
Adams, HazardThe Book of Yeats's Poems. Florida State University Press, 1990. Reads the collected Poems as Yeats's attempt to construct a fictive version of his life story.
Albright, Daniel. Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Considers how modernist poetry was influenced by modern physics.
Allison, Jonathan, ed. Yeats's Political Identities. University of Michigan Press, 1996. Collects various important critical discussions of Yeats's politics.
Archibald, Douglas. Yeats. Syracuse University Press, 1983. A wide-ranging survey of the poet's career; includes valuable accounts of many major poems.
Bloom, Harold. Yeats. Oxford University Press, 1970. Reads Yeats's oeuvre as a series of creative “swerves” away from Romantic writers, especially Blake and Shelley.
Bornstein, George. Yeats and Shelley. University of Chicago Press, 1970. A carefully delineated account of Yeats's readings and misreadings of Shelley.
Brown, Terence. The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography. Blackwell, 1999. A good option for those in need of a briefer biography than Foster's.
Childs, Donald J.Modernist Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Describes eugenics as a pervasive influence on early-twentieth-century culture; includes a lengthy chapter on Yeats.
Cullingford, Elizabeth Butler. Gender and History in Yeats's Love Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1993. The first full-length feminist study of Yeats.
Cullingford, Elizabeth Butler. Yeats, Ireland and Fascism. New York University Press, 1981. Charts the evolution of Yeats's politics, emphasizing the influence of John O'Leary and William Morris.
Deane, Seamus. Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880–1980. Faber and Faber, 1985. Includes “Yeats and the Idea of Revolution.”
Donoghue, Denis. William Butler Yeats. Viking, 1971. A valuable introduction by one of Ireland's best-known critics; emphasizes Nietzsche's influence.
Ellmann, Richard. The Identity of Yeats. Oxford University Press, 1954. An early and influential exploration of the patterns of thought and mood underlying the evolution of Yeats's diction, imagery, and symbolism.
Ellmann, Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. 1948. Norton, 1979. A seminal early study. Focuses on the poet's struggle to unify his identity, emphasizing his occult studies and the influence of his father.
Engelberg, Edward. The Vast Design: Patterns in W. B. Yeats's Aesthetic. University of Toronto Press, 1964. Analyzes Yeats's writings about art and artists in order to chart his development of a coherent theory of art.
Flannery, James W.W. B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice. Yale University Press, 1976. Focuses on Yeats's theatrical theories during the early years of the Abbey Theatre and on his difficulties in actually staging the sorts of productions he had in mind.
Fletcher, Ian. W. B. Yeats and His Contemporaries. St. Martin's, 1987. Stresses late-nineteenth-century influences.
Foster, R. F.W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865–1914, and Volume II: The Arch-Poet, 1915–1939. Oxford University Press, 1997 and 2003. The most comprehensive, reliable, and even-handed biography.
Harwood, John. Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats: After Long Silence. St. Martin's, 1989. Sheds light on the poet's relationships with women and on his nineties work.
Harper, George Mills. Yeats's Golden Dawn. Macmillan, 1974. A detailed account of Yeats's involvement in the internal affairs of the Order of the Golden Dawn.
Harper, George Mills, ed. Yeats and the Occult. Macmillan, 1976. Collects informative scholarly essays by various hands as well as several important texts by Yeats himself.
Howes, Marjorie. Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Employs feminist and postcolonial theory to examine how issues of gender and class affected Yeats's changing conceptions of Irishness.
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. Harvard University Press, 1995. A sweeping, influential application of postcolonial theory to modern Irish literature; includes several chapters on Yeats.
Loizeaux, Elizabeth Bergmann. Yeats and the Visual Arts. Rutgers University Press, 1986. Correlates the poet's development with changes in his thinking about painting and sculpture.
Longenbach, James. Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism. Oxford University Press, 1988. The most thorough treatment of Yeats's relationship with Pound.
MacNeice, Louis. The Poetry of W. B. Yeats. 1941. Oxford University Press, 1969. An important early study. Argues that Yeats's interest in Irish realities gradually forced him to synthesize his Romantic and esoteric fantasies with keen attention to everyday life.
Marcus, Phillip L.Yeats and the Beginning of the Irish Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 1970. A detailed account of the poet's activities and contemporaries in the 1890s.
Miller, Liam. The Noble Drama of W. B. Yeats. Dolmen, 1977. A fact-filled account of Yeats's theatre work, featuring copious illustrations.
Olney, James. The Rhizome and the Flower: The Perennial Philosophy – Yeats and Jung. University of California Press, 1980. Attributes parallels between Yeats and Jung to sources in Plato, Platonic tradition, and pre-Socratic philosophy.
Parkinson, Thomas. W. B. Yeats, Self Critic: A Study of His Early Verse. University of California Press, 1951. Analyzes revisions of the early poems to demonstrate the effects on the poet's lyric manner of his involvement in the theatre.
Parkinson, Thomas. W. B. Yeats: The Later Poetry. University of California Press, 1964. Examines the composition, symbolism, and prosody of the later poetry, stressing Yeats's commitment to dramatic conflict.
Pierce, David. Yeats's Worlds: Ireland, England and the Poetic Imagination. Yale University Press, 1995. A beautifully illustrated overview of the poet's life and work that considers both Irish and English contexts.
Thuente, Mary Helen. W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore. Gill and Macmillan, 1980. The best book on its topic.
Toomey, Deirdre, ed. Yeats and Women. Macmillan, 1997. Partly rpt. from Yeats and Women: Yeats Annual No. 9, 1992. Collects important essays on Yeats's relationships with his mother, Maud Gonne, Lady Gregory, and others.
Torchiana, Donald T.W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland. Northwestern University Press, 1966. Shows how Yeats's idealization of the eighteenth-century Ascendancy developed out of his disillusionment with nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland.
Unterecker, John. A Reader's Guide to William Butler Yeats. Noonday, 1959. An important early attempt to read Yeats's collected Poems as a carefully arranged oeuvre.
Vendler, Helen. Yeats's “Vision” and the Later Plays. Harvard University Press, 1963. Explores the later plays in relation to Yeats's esoteric interests, arguing that A Vision can be read as an exercise in literary history and poetic theory.
Watson, G. J.Irish Identity and the Literary Revival: Synge, Yeats, Joyce and O'Casey. 1979. Catholic University of America Press, 1994. A path-breaking account of Irish identity in the work of four important writers.
Whitaker, Thomas R.Swan and Shadow: Yeats's Dialogue with History. University of North Carolina Press, 1964. Discusses Yeats's conceptions of history.
