Page "W. B. Yeats" Paragraph 4

An Anglo-Irishman, William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland.

His father, John Butler Yeats ( 1839 – 1922 ), was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier and linen merchant who died in 1712.

Jervis ' grandson Benjamin married Mary Butler, daughter of a landed family in County Kildare.

At the time of his marriage, John Yeats was studying law but abandoned his studies to study art at Heatherley's Art School in London.

His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a wealthy merchant family in the county town Sligo, County Sligo, who owned a milling and shipping business.

Soon after William's birth the family relocated to the Pollexfen home at Merville, Sligo to stay with her extended family, and the young poet came to think of the area as his childhood and spiritual home.

Its landscape became, over time, both literally and symbolically, his " country of the heart ".

The Butler Yeats family were highly artistic ; his brother Jack became an esteemed painter, while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary — known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily — became involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement.