When You Are Old ─ Early Poems and Fairy Tales

Y is for Yeats. A specially compiled edition for the Penguin Drop Caps series, When You Are Old will include the most accessible, best-known poems by W.B. Yeats from his early years that made the Nobel Prize winning writer and poet popular in his day. The volume will include all the major love poems written most notably for the brilliant yet elusive Irish revolutionary Maude Gonne. Recalling Yeats’s 1890s fascination in aestheticism and the arts and crafts movement, selections will draw from the first published versions of poems from works such as Crossways, The Rose, The Wind Among the Reeds, In the Seven Woods, The Green Helmet and Other Poems, Responsibilities, The Wild Swans at Coole, and Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A selection Irish myths and fairytales including ?The Wanderings of Oisin,” a Celtic fable and his first major poem, represent his fascination with mysticism, spiritualism and the rich and imaginative heritage of his native land.

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. Yeats attended school in London and in Dublin but spent his summers in Connaught, in the west of Ireland. Early in his career, Yeats was part of the fin de siecle in London and involved with Irish literary revival groups. His first book of poetry, Mosada, A Dramatic Poem, was published in 1886 followed by The Wanderings of Oisin in 1889. With Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theater and served as the chief playwright. After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art drastically changed toward a more esoteric and experimental style, heavily influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922 and received the Nobel Prize in 1923. His poetry volumes, in particular The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940) distinguished Yeats as one of the most influential English language poets of the twentieth century. William Butler Yeats died on January 28, 1939 in Roquebrune, France and was buried in Ireland. Jessica Hische is a letterer, illustrator, typographer, and web designer. She currently serves on the Type Directors Club board of directors, has been named a Forbes Magazine "30 under 30" in art and design as well as an ADC Young Gun and one of Print Magazine’s "New Visual Artists". She has designed for Wes Anderson, McSweeney's, Tiffany & Co, Penguin Books and many others. She resides primarily in San Francisco, occasionally in Brooklyn.