John Sherman and Dhoya

By William Butler Yeats

John Sherman and Dhoya, novella and story, are among the earliest of W.B. Yeats's published compositions, begun at his father's prompting when the young poet was living in London in 1888. John Sherman is a poignant and delightful narrative that dramatizes the predicament of a young man in love, troubled by his senses. It is complexly autobiographical, projecting the poet's Self and Anti-self through the contrasted personalites of Sherman and Howard, exalting a yearned-for Sligo in the west of Ireland at the expense of an alien English metropolis. Dhoya is a wonder tale of the heroic age, also set in Sligo, blending Irish mythology with local legend, and anticipating the Celtic Twighlight stories of 1893 and the late Byzantium poems. Published first in 1891 and again in 1908, John Shermand Dhoya last appeared in America in 1969. This text followed that of the first edition and is accompanied by an Afterword by Eve Patten.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 1990
• ISBN: 9781843513803

William Butler Yeats

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet. Born in Sandymount, Yeats was raised between Sligo, England, and Dublin by John Butler Yeats, a prominent painter, and Susan Mary Pollexfen, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. He began writing poetry around the age of seventeen, influenced by the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but soon turned to Irish folklore and the mystical writings of William Blake for inspiration. As a young man he joined and founded several occult societies, including the Dublin Hermetic Order and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, participating in séances and rituals as well as acting as a recruiter. While these interests continued throughout Yeats’ life, the poet dedicated much of his middle years to the struggle for Irish independence. In 1904, alongside John Millington Synge, Florence Farr, the Fay brothers, and Annie Horniman, Yeats founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which opened with his play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News and remains Ireland’s premier venue for the dramatic arts to this day. Although he was an Irish Nationalist, and despite his work toward establishing a distinctly Irish movement in the arts, Yeats—as is evident in his poem “Easter, 1916”—struggled to identify his idealism with the sectarian violence that emerged with the Easter Rising in 1916. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, Yeats was appointed to the role of Senator and served two terms in the position. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and continued to write and publish poetry, philosophical and occult writings, and plays until his death in 1939.

Reviews for John Sherman and Dhoya

[maowangvater · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It was difficult for me to rate this volume using one to five stars. For the most part Yeats does not speak to me. It was a chore to finish this book. It was climbing a mountain just to say I’d done it, but finding the scenery along the way excessively tedious. Of the 507 poems in this comprehensive edition, I found five that were brilliant works of poetic genius. Those are the ones found in anthologies of best or favorite poems, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, “The Second Coming”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, and “Leda and the Swan.” There we also pleasant enough dramatic and narrative poems like “The Island of Statues,” “The Shadowy Waters,” and “The Wandering of Oisin” that were enjoyable to read. For the rest, I was bored by the overabundance of occult gibberish and symbolism about towers, roses, winding stairs, and gyres, and the tedium of having them repeated over and over again. I confess my ignorance of Irish folklore and politics. But, after reading his poems on those themes and receiving neither insight or pleasure from them, it sparked little desire or curiosity in me to learn more about either subject.

[olivermagnus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a beautiful collection of the poems that encompass the work of W. B. Yeats and span his entire career. Everyone will find something they enjoy in this collection. Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeats's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most respected poets.