"Such Friends": The Work of W. B. Yeats

From June 26, 1999 through September 11, 1999
D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall (First Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)

This exhibition surveys the multi-faceted career of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) as poet, playwright, and editor. Yeats's contribution to the literary currents of his time, including the Irish literary renaissance signaled in part by the flowering of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, is strongly represented, as is his involvement in the unprecedented social and political upheaval that resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) in 1922. Through his relationships with such contemporaries as Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Maud Gonne, Ezra Pound, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, Lady Gregory, and AE (George) Russell, as well as members of his family, including his ambivalently beloved father, Yeats created a transcendent literary community that nurtured his work.

Items from the Berg Collection include Yeats's extremely rare first book, Mosada; an exquisite pencil drawing of Yeats created in 1890 by his father, the artist John Butler Yeats; a rare etching of Yeats by Augustus John; and the spectacular composite manuscript of The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), given by Yeats to his patron, John Quinn. The many autograph and typed letters on display include some from Maud Gonne, several to Irish patriot John O'Leary, a number from Yeats to Lady Gregory (of the nearly 1,000 letters to her in the Berg Collection), and several to John Quinn. Yeats was one of the most conspicuous revisers in literary history, and the exhibit includes a number of heavily marked-up proofs and galleys which show his multiple revisions, sometimes even after material had been published.

The materials in "Such Friends" are drawn primarily from the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, which includes a major repository of materials by and about Yeats. The exhibition also features materials from other New York Public Library divisions, including the John Quinn Memorial Collection in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, and selected loans from the poet's son, Michael Yeats, as well as the National Library of Ireland.