texts:
<mask> was a Bengali spiritual master and yogi, considered to be one of the most influential gurus of oriental philosophy. Early life
Loknath was born as Loknath Ghoshal at Chaurasi Chakla (in present-day West Bengal) on Janmashtami (the birthday of Lord Krishna) in 1730 in a Bengali Brahmin family to Ramnarayan Ghoshal (father) and Kamaladevi (mother). He was the fourth of their children. As was the convention of his times, his parents had pledged to send one of their sons to be a sannyasi. When he was 10, Loknath's father approached Pandit Bhagavan Ganguly, a local householder yogi, to be his son's teacher. Bhagavan Ganguly immediately saw the potential of divinity in young Loknath and readily agreed to take him in as his disciple. Loknath left his parents and started his spiritual training with Bhagavan Ganguly shortly thereafter.Also accompanying him on his spiritual expedition was his friend Benimadhav. In the realm of religious world the name of Shree Shree Loknath <mask> Baba bears the top dignity among the saints who sacrificed their body and mind at the altar of great perseverance in order to achieve the salvation of life. The descendant of this great saint was the inhabitant of the province of West Bengal in Barasat, Chakla in 1730 (18th Bhadra, 1137 Bangabda) of India. His father's name was Shree Ramnarayan Ghoshal and the name of his mother was Shrimati Kamala Debi. Baba Loknath was fourth son of their parents. The father of Loknath was religious minded and he always cherished an ambition that one of his sons would be monk who would rescue his generation as well as mankind. After the first issue had come into the womb of his wife, he placed his proposal to her, but her wife refused his proposal.During the time of second issue he placed the same proposal but this time also she did not agree. During third issue same negative word came from his wife. But at the time of fourth issue, his wife informed her husband that he might take this son and might lead him the way whatever he liked. At this the heart of the father of Loknath leapt up with joy and without any delay he at once went to the house of Bhagaban Ganguli the then great scholar in Hindu religion in Barasat to inform him that he had come to him to give. One of his sons named Loknath in his hand to carry him out the monk life. Bhagaban Ganguli was in the line of wisdom in religion. He came to know in studying the religion that the great salvation of life can be achieved by practicing the Karma-Yoga in the process of work in accordance with the rule of religious practice Bhagaban Ganguli was faithful in Jñāna-Yoga but not in Karma-Yoga.Though the doctrine of religion is not false, yet it is not possible on his part to have achieved the real truth by practicing himself. For he was then the age of sixty. Now he thought this great chance had come from God. So he did not let this opportunity go in rain then he desired this fact would be proved by leading his disciple in this line i.e. in Karma-Yoga. At once he said to the father of Loknath that he would lead his son in the line of Karma-Yoga in order to achieve the perfection in monk life. At the appointed day the departure of Loknath from his village came near.In that village a boy named Benimadhab Ganguli who was the friend of Baba Loknath desired to be his company. The parents of Benimadhab did not accept it. But Benimadhab was strong determined to full fill his desire. At last his parents agreed to let him go. At the appointed day, the celebration of monk ceremony of the two boys observed with is fitting manner in that village. In the next day all the men and women gave then adieu with tearful eyes. Then Bhagaban Ganguli with two boys who were 11 years old started for Kalighat in Kolkata.There they took shelter in jungle where so many monks did practice the yoga. Now the two boys came under chained life and led their life under the direction of their preceptor. The Gurudeb (Bhagaban Ganguli) would go to the nearer village in order to gather food for all of them. He did not allow them to go to the nearer village in order to gather it. For their fickleness of mind would osculate to see the posture and gesture of village man and woman. He would himself take the food and fed the two boys. Even he made them seat in a place where they used to practice the yoga without any movement.They used to sit in a place in statuesque position and practiced the process of yoga in order of direction. Gurudeb would clear the evacuation of their bowels and urines by his own hands so that no disturbance could come in the way of practicing the yoga. Such a preceptor is rare now-a-days. How ever these two boys absolutely surrendered to their preceptor. Bhagaban Ganguly also led them according to the trends of religion. To achieve succession in yoga self- restraint plays vital role. So in order to make balance in their body in practicing the Yoga Gurudeb made them practice Nokta-Brata which means starvation all the day and light meal in the night.This meal was consisted with milk and til. i.e., a kind of grain. This diet they drank about 40 years. Once by way of conversation Loknath as ked Gurudeb that they were the monks with out knowledge of religion. At this Gurudeb said to them his learning of religion would be infused in them by way of practicing the yoga. Spiritual training and enlightenment
For the next three decades, Baba Loknath underwent intense training in various schools of Yoga in several remote locations all over the Indian subcontinent. He adopted a lifestyle of extreme austerity and vowed celibacy (hence brahmacārī) and undertook long periods of fasting.He finally attained Enlightenment in the Himalayas at the age of 90 in 1820. His guru was still alive and 150 years old at that point. After enlightenment, he is said to have traveled all over South Asia and Southeast Asia on foot. Having transcended the narrow boundaries of faith and religion, he visited many holy sites of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. This included three trips to Mecca and tours of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Palestine, and other regions of western Asia and the Middle East. Then Bhagaban Ganguli began ton teach them "The Akantara-Brata", which means the starvation previous day and taking the meal after to next day. This Brata extended in the process of are thematically progression.i.e., after two days (including day and night) the taking of meal of the following day. In this way 30 days (day and night) of starvation the taking of meal on the next day. Loknath got the succession in two times. But Benimadhab could not more the one. On practicing this method with the process of yoga Loknath marked at his memory his "previous birth" and described the facts and figures to his Gurudeb. On hearing this Gurudeb took the pen and ink pot and wrote down his description what he found in his memory. The description was Loknath had taken birth in the Bandyopadhyay family at the name of Sitanath in the Burdwan district near the bank of Damodar River.On going to Burdwan they got the proof. Then they started for Himalayan Mountains and selected a place for meditation. There they practiced the yoga with deep concentration. It is referred here before going to the Himalaya Gurudeb examined their body and mind. To examine their body and mind he made them sat in a place where insects and ants bit them, but it was found that in spite of biting their meditation did not break and to examine their concentration of mind Gurudeb made them sat in a popular area where varieties of noises would disturb the serenity of their mind but he minutely observed that their meditation was as before as it was. However, in the Himalayan Mountain their last practice of yoga made them reach to the real goal. They got the transcendental feeing of joy and success in salvation.On reaching to high position of religion Loknath cried to see the miserable able condition of his Gurudeb Bhagaban Ganguli was entangled with earthly affairs. He told Loknath that he (Gurudeb) was faithful in the path of wisdom for salvation but not in Karma-Yoga. So he said to Loknath immediately he would leave his body by yoga and would take new birth then he ordered Baba Loknath to make arrangement for his salvation keeping him under his incentive care. When the two boys got success of salvation in Karma-yoga, their age was then 100 years. After achievement of salvation, Baba Loknath, Beni Madhab and Gurudeb determined to pilgrim on the holy place of Islam and desired to be apprenticeship under an experienced wise man, i.e. Alem in order to learn The Holy Qu'ran. They started on foot in Mecca.At first they reached at Kabul and began to learn The Qu'ran under the teachership of Mollah Shadi by name at his house Kabul they passed the painstaking road and reached Mecca via Modena. Then they visited Medina and they met a pir named Abdul Gafur who was 400 years old and was in trans in a secret cave. Baba Loknath being Amzad means virtuous life realised the inner significance of Islam and got the truth of universal role of religion. After words he exposed his feeling of truth at Baradi and his teaching aimed at was rather universal in its scope and was Non-sectarian who made him acceptable to all caste and creeds. However, after then they started for Beneras (Kashi Dham, India) where they met with Tralayanga Swami who was well known as "The God Shiv of Kashi". Bhagaban Ganguli requested him to receive the two boys from his hand and lead them according to his desire. Tralayanga Swami agreed to his proposal and received them.Once Gurudeb (Bhagaban Ganguli) bathed and took meditation in the Manikarnika Ghat (Kashi Dham). After long time had passed, he did not leave his meditation any sooner had he touched his body, than the body fell down on the ground. At this Baba Loknath realised his Gurudeb had breathed his last. He did not weep for it. He cremated the dead body and finished his funeral work. After the death of Gurudeb a great desire raised in the mind of Baba Loknath on world tour. On reaching at the end of eternal wisdom of universe he felt the material object is not value less to him.So the versatile appearance of nature its inner beauty and the men of various country attracted his mind, and as a result he started for world tour with the company of Beni Madhab and Tralayanga Swami. About so many years on foot. They traveled Mecca, Medina and Palestine and in the west. The eastern coast of Mediterranean. They also traveled in France. This evidence came to light when some Englishmen conversed with him and he uttered some France words. After traveling of Afghanistan, Persia, Arab and so many countries of Europe, he came back at the natural beauteous environment of Himalaya.This time Mahayogi Loknath desired to surmount the highest glacial of Himalaya and also desired to roam in north and west of it. Hence they lived in Bandarika Ashram which is glacial. There they waited for long in order to make the body of Benimadhab adjusted to that environment. By this time suddenly Tralanyanga Swami presented there. He also desired to be accompanying with them in

masks:
Baba Lokenath Brahmachari
Brahmachari


type: original

texts:
 this tour. Baba Loknath was highly pleased at this. So they had to wait for further 3 years there in order to make adjustment of the body of Tralayanga Swami with cool and ice.Then they set-in, with a view to observing the polar region through historic way of Mahaprasthan, i.e., the way in which Pañcapāṇḍava started for ever. On that very travel their body was absolutely uncovered and they passed the time in Himalaya with naked body. As they passed their lives on long time in the region of ice, a wonderful skin like white as ice grew in their body and they did not feel any keen of cold. On going in this way they reached at Manas-Sarovar. But this Manas-Sarovar was not the geographical region situated at Tibet. These Manas is situated on the remote corner in a rigid place. To reach at that place is quite impossible for common people.About this travel how much we get from the saying of Mahayogi Loknath was that they traveled over thousand and thousand miles on the eastern Saiberia of Russia and turned into deeper on the northern side. After going through months over months they reached in such a place where the light of sun is absolutely omit. All was covered with dark. In such a position it is next to impossible on their part to go to further in advance. So they were compelled to bind to stay there for sometime. Now we can guess that they reached at the polar region, where the duration of day is six months and the night six months. On staying there they got the power to see in the dark.They had intense desire to witness the polar region for long time. But it was not possible on their part to identify the rising and setting of sun. This time Traylanga Swami wished to see the path of rising sun and started to full-fill his missing. Loknath and Benimadhab started for the path of Tibet of Himalaya. After long day they came down at lowland of the Eastern corner of India after crossing the high summits of Himalaya through Tibet and China. At last they reached at forest full of tigers at the hill of Chandranath. One day Benimadhab expressed his desire to Loknath to witness the temple of Kamakhya.Almost after so many years the two close companies took adieu from each other after traveling thousands of miles West-North and South-East of the earth. Benimadhab set for the city of Kamakhya and Baba Loknath took decision to go to the East Bengal (Bangladesh) where his after wards works were pending. Return to Bengal
<mask> returned to Bengal in 1866 and settled down at Baradi, near Dhaka (present-day Bangladesh), where he built a small thatch out of mud and bamboo using his own hands. This would later grow to be his ashram for the rest of his life. The plot of land was donated by Dengu Karmakar, whom Baba had saved from a conviction in the past. Unlike many other sages and mystics of his times, Baba preferred to keep a low profile and avoided any kind of publicity. Nonetheless, he would help and heal anyone who visited him, irrespective of their caste, creed, or color.His fame inevitably spread far and wide, and the ashram at Baradi slowly started attracting devotees from all over the world. One day Baba Loknath sat on the hill tracts of Chandra Nath in Chittagong, Bangladesh he marked a Yogi sat under a tree in the mood of meditation. His sitting place was confined in jungle, suddenly all the jungle began to burn with fire and that yogi was attacked with fire. That yogi was "Bejoy Krishna Goswami". As the fire began to intensify all the beasts and animals surrounding the jungle began to run hither and thither with crying. At this the meditation of that yogi broke and he tried to come out from that unbearable condition, but in vain at naked body monk with long hair and beard came forward before him and took his heavy body in his shoulder just like a child and through that fire he began to advance in order to go out of it. Goswami felt that the flame was without heat and at the same time he felt cold touch throughout his body.When he got his sense he found he was laid down in a bed under a well-protected foot of the hall. That monk disappeared protecting him from certain death. Afterwards Bejoy Krishna Goswami went to Baradi to meet with Baba Loknath. Then he (Baba Loknath) drew the attention of Goswami about the incident occurred in the hill of Chandranath and asked by whom his life was saved. At that moment the image of that great man flashed in the realm of his mind and found that it was he who stood before him. Then and there he (Bejoy Krishna Goswami) bent his head under the lotus feet of Baba Loknath. However, on descending from the hill Chandra-Nath, Baba Loknath went to the village named Dawood Kandi in the district of Comilla, Bangladesh.There he was acquainted with a person who was convicted with murder case, bore the name Dengu Karmaker the inhabitant of Baradi. At that time he stayed at Dawood Kandi as an opponent of judgment. In order to be released form the case he used to go from one steadier another. At that time he found a tall man with long hair and bearded. His body was as white as an ice and his image was a statue sat under a tree. He at once ran to that hermit and began to weep with holding his legs and prayed to him to escape his life. Baba Loknath with sweet tune said to him that he had no anxiety.He will be released without any cause. On the next day he went to the court and was astonished to hear the hearing of the judge. He had been free from his charge. Then Dengu Karmaker came to Baba Loknath and requested him with utmost to go to Baradi and at last he got him (Baba) permission from him. Baba Loknath said he was ready to keep his secret foot-prints on the sand of Baradi. He came at the house of Dengu Karmaker and took shelter under that aching of a boat in his house. He was a Naked Saint.So the villagers did not like him. They often teased him and brought hit upon his body. But Baba Loknath bore all hates, insults and hits with handsome forgiveness of mind. Baba Loknath was a celibate. He was a vegetarian. He was pure in thought, body and mind throughout his life. So he got the power of incarnation of god.Now he desired to disclose some of his super natural power in order to attract the public under his lotus feet. After showing some supernatural power his name and fame were spread all over the country and abroad. Soon the hut of Dengu Karmaker transformed into a place of pilgrimage. Here we can define "Dengu Karmaker" as Bhagirath and Baba Loknath as the goddess "Ganga" who brought him at Baradi in order to rescue his generation as well as mankind in general from ignorance. Baba Loknath also would know his coming at Baradi among which one of the main works was to rescue his preceptor. However Dengu Karmakar lives long more. Myths and legends
Not much is known about <mask>'s personal life, which has always remained shrouded in mystery.Several folklores exist about his miraculous powers and magical abilities. He is said to have lived until 160 and remains one of the most prominent examples of the human longevity myth. Baba stood taller than 7 feet in height and had a very thin, lanky disposition. Decades of sadhana in the High Himalayas had given him the ability to tolerate extremely cold temperatures without any warm clothing. In his later years, he is also said to have completely given up sleeping and would even not blink. Since he never turned anybody down, he was also known as the Wish tree. Death and legacy
Baba went into a samadhi with his eyes wide open on 1 June 1890 (19 Joishtho 1297 BS).He was surrounded by his disciples at his Baradi Ashram. Comforting his mourning devotees shortly before his death, Baba promised to continue being available to anyone who prayed and asked for help, even after his death and forever. One of his famous quotes roughly transliterates as: "Whether it is at war, or in the woods, or on the water; if you are ever in danger, remember me, and I shall save you." In Bengali: "রণে বনে জলে জঙ্গলে, যখনই যেখানে বিপদে পড়িবে, আমাকে স্মরণ করিবে আমি তোমাদের রক্ষা করিব।"

<mask> continues to be a revered spiritual figure in India and abroad, well more than a century after his death. After his death the Nag Zaminder of Baradi to have consent of Baba Loknath allotted a plot that was a Cremation Ground situated on the bank of the River Chagal Baghini in his name. In- the-mean time Baba Loknath took the dress as a social being. He stayed at that Asram about 26 years and played various uncommon activities.During his staying many men and women from different religion used to come to him and the Ashram was turned into a great place of holy pilgrimage to all sects of people such as Hindu, Muslim, Buddha and Christian etc. and as a result a feeling of great brother-hood grew among the people on the high level of humanity and led to form a society in which all are mingled into the feeling of oneness. According to the calendar of Bengali years 1297 (1890) the great Maha-Yogi Baba Loknath left his earthly body he disclosed his desire to leave his earthly body over at that appointed day (19th Jyestha at 11:45 a.m.) to his dearest and nearest devotees and also said during his death the sky would be clear and sunny, he would penetrate through the rays of sun and would enter into the realm of the absolute spirit. The Baba was meditating when he went into a trance with his eyes open, and while still meditation, left his physical body forever. He was aged 160. He had said before his death, "I am eternal, I am deathless. After this body falls, do not think that everything will come to an end.I will live in the hearts of all living beings in my subtle astral form. Whoever will seek my refuge, will always receive my Grace". He also gave order to his devotees, after his death they should burn his body. His saying was true. According to his direction his dead body was burnt with Candan Wood and Ghee. When his body was burning a man came from Lunglebond to Baradi. On the way he heard Baba Loknath was no more on earth.He at once went to Baba Loknath Ashram and saw the scene in his own eyes. Then he narrated the play with Baba Loknath among the assembled devotees in the premises of the funeral cremation of Baba Loknath. When he crossed the river Brahamaputra by boat on eastern part, he himself saw Baba Loknath was going to the western part of Brahamaputra by another boat he had the opportunity to talk with him. This incident happened at the time of 12:00 A.M to 12:30 P.M. on the Dated of 19th Jystha, 1297 Bangabda (1890). Now on seeing this incident he was stunned for a long time and afterwards he admitted nothing is impossible on the part of the Mahayogi Loknath Brahamachari. On the cremation ground place a great Samadhi temple with the collaboration of dear and near disciple Mathura Mohon Chakrabarti had been created by the subscription of local public. References

Further reading

External links

 Baba Lokenath
 Baba Lokenath (1730-1890)

1730 births
1890 deaths
Ascetics
Bengali Brahmins
Bengal Renaissance
Longevity myths
Indian Hindu yogis
Indian Hindu monks
Religious pluralism
Bengali Hindu saints
19th-century Hindu philosophers and theologians
People from West

masks:
Baba Lokenath
Baba Lokenath
Baba Lokenath


texts:
<mask> (December 31, 1925 – May 12, 2001) was a college and professional American football fullback who played for the Ohio State Buckeyes, Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the 1940s and 1950s. A standout high school athlete in his hometown of Fredericktown, Ohio, <mask> attended Ohio State University starting in 1944. He became the football team's primary fullback that year as the school went unbeaten and was ranked second in the nation in the AP Poll. The following year, <mask> was named the most valuable player in the Big Ten Conference, rushing for 936 yards as Ohio State built up a 7–2 record and was ranked 12th in the AP Poll. Following a brief stint in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II, <mask> returned to Ohio State for a final season in 1947. <mask> began his professional career by signing with the Browns, a team in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) coached by former Ohio State head coach Paul Brown. Cleveland won all of its games and the AAFC championship in 1948 while Cline served as a backup to fullback Marion Motley.Cleveland traded <mask> to the Buffalo Bills, where he spent the 1949 season, and joined the Lions in 1950 when the AAFC folded. The Lions won the NFL Championship Game in 1952 and 1953, beating the Browns both times. <mask> then retired from football and earned a master's degree in education. He later worked at a variety of school systems in Ohio and Arizona. <mask> was inducted into the Ohio State Varsity O Hall of Fame and was named to the Ohio State Football All-Century Team in 2000. He died in 2001. Early life and college career

<mask> grew up in Fredericktown, Ohio and attended the local Fredericktown High School, where he played on the football team as a back.In a 1942 game against Mount Gilead High School, he scored seven touchdowns and kicked two extra points, scoring 44 total points in a 79–6 victory. After graduating from high school, <mask> attended Ohio State University and played on the school's football team starting as a freshman in 1944. Although he was overshadowed by teammate Les Horvath, who won the Heisman Trophy that year, <mask> was the team's starting fullback and ran for 221 yards on 65 carries, scoring 39 points. The Buckeyes won the Big Ten Conference championship with an undefeated 9-0 record and were ranked second in the country in the AP Poll. The 1945 season was the most productive of <mask>'s college career. He led the Big Ten in rushing with 936 yards, at the time a school record, and scored nine touchdowns. <mask> rushed for 229 yards in a November game against the University of Pittsburgh, setting an Ohio State single-game record that stood for 27 years until Archie Griffin broke it in 1972.The Buckeyes finished with a 7–2 record for third in the Big Ten and were ranked 12th in the AP Poll. <mask> was awarded the Chicago Tribune Silver Football, given to the most valuable player in the Big Ten. He was named a second-team All-American by the Associated Press and a third-team All-American by the Football Writers Association of America. <mask> was accepted for military service before the 1945 season, but was not called up for duty until the following February. <mask>, who had been passed over by the U.S. Army twice because of a punctured ear drum, was sent to Camp Atterbury, a training base in Indiana. When the war ended, <mask> returned to Ohio State in 1947 and rushed for 332 yards and two touchdowns in eight games. The team finished the season with a 2–6–1 record.Professional career

<mask> decided to begin his professional career in 1948 despite that he had a year of college eligibility remaining. The move upset some Ohio State supporters worried about the team's loss of talent, but <mask> said he wanted to go pro because he was getting married and needed to start making money. He had been drafted by the National Football League's Chicago Bears, but signed instead with the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a team coached by former Ohio State coach Paul Brown. "I plan to be married in June," <mask> said at the time. "I feel I have a great opportunity with the Browns, and I've always wanted to play for Paul Brown. I feel that I have made the only logical decision." Although Brown's tenure as Ohio State coach predated <mask>'s career there, Brown said he had followed <mask> with interest."<mask> isn't big, as pro fullbacks go, but he can run – and I like 'em when they can run," Brown said. In the Browns, <mask> joined a team that had won the AAFC championships 1946 and 1947 behind an offensive attack that featured quarterback Otto Graham, fullback Marion Motley and ends Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie. Serving as a backup to Motley, <mask> ran for 129 yards in 1948, when Cleveland went undefeated and won the AAFC championship for the third time in a row. Despite <mask>'s ties to Brown and Ohio State, Cleveland traded him to the Buffalo Bills after the season. He responded by turning in the best year of his professional career, running for 518 yards and three touchdowns. The Bills faced the Browns three times that year, tying twice and losing once in a playoff game. Buffalo finished with a 5–5–2 record and did not reach the league championship game.The AAFC folded after the 1949 season, but three teams were merged into the NFL: the Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers. With the folding of the Bills, <mask> was placed in the 1950 AAFC Dispersal Draft and taken in the second round (No. 19 overall) by the New York Giants, but was traded by New York to the Detroit Lions for end Kelly Mote. <mask> played for the Lions for four seasons. Led by quarterback Bobby Layne and halfback Doak Walker, the Lions won the NFL championship in 1952 and 1953, beating the Browns both times. Later career and death

After his playing career, <mask> received a master's degree in education from Ohio's Wittenberg University in 1965. His educational career took him to posts at school systems in Springfield, Ohio, Sidney, Ohio, Mount Vernon, Ohio and Prescott, Arizona.By the early 1970s, he was principal of North Union High School in Richwood, Ohio. He also served as the dean of men at Urbana College in Urbana, Ohio. <mask> was inducted into the Ohio State Varsity O Hall of Fame and named to the Ohio State Football All-Century Team in 2000. He died in 2001. His hometown of Fredericktown declared January 20, 2001 "Ollie Cline Day" in his honor. References

Bibliography

1925 births
2001 deaths
American football running backs
Buffalo Bills (AAFC) players
Cleveland Browns (AAFC) players
Detroit Lions players
Ohio State Buckeyes football players
People from Mount Vernon, Ohio
People from Fredericktown, Ohio
Military personnel from Ohio
United States Army personnel of World War II

masks:
Oliver Monroe Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Ollie
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline
Cline


texts:
<mask> (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. A Protestant of Anglo-Irish decent, <mask> was born in Sandymount and was educated in Dublin and London and spent childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, <mask> and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised.He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had became the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1894, and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. <mask> was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, his major works include 1928's The Tower and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems, published in 1932. Biography

Early years
<mask> <mask> was born in Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland. His father, <mask> <mask> (1839–1922), was a descendant of Jervis <mask>, a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter, who died in 1712. <mask>, Jervis's grandson and <mask>'s great-great-grandfather, had in 1773 married <mask> of a landed family in County Kildare. Following their marriage, they kept the name <mask>.Mary was of the <mask> of Neigham (pronounced Nyam) Gowran family, descended from an illegitimate brother of The 8th Earl of Ormond. At the time of his marriage, <mask>'s father, <mask>, was studying law, but would later pursue art studies at Heatherley School of Fine Art, in London. <mask>'s mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from Sligo, from a wealthy merchant family, which owned a milling and shipping business. Soon after <mask>'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 personally and symbolically, his "country of the heart". So too did its location by the sea; <mask> stated that "by marriage with a Pollexfen, we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs". The <mask> 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.<mask> was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly supportive of the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of the late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleon's dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty "is manifestly true of W.B.Y." <mask>'s childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement; the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Irish Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had a profound effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his country's biography. In 1867, the family moved to England to aid their father, John, to further his career as an artist.At first, the <mask> children were educated at home. Their mother entertained them with stories and Irish folktales. John provided an erratic education in geography and chemistry and took <mask> on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside. On 26 January 1877, the young poet entered the Godolphin School, which he attended for four years. He did not distinguish himself academically, and an early school report describes his performance as "only fair. Perhaps better in Latin than in any other subject. Very poor in spelling".Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages (possibly because he was tone deaf), he was fascinated by biology and zoology. In 1879 the family moved to Bedford Park taking a two-year lease on 8 Woodstock Road. For financial reasons, the family returned to Dublin toward the end of 1880, living at first in the suburbs of Harold's Cross and later in Howth. In October 1881, <mask> resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High School. His father's studio was nearby and <mask> spent a great deal of time there, where he met many of the city's artists and writers. During this period he started writing poetry, and, in 1885, the Dublin University Review published <mask>'s first poems, as well as an essay entitled "The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson". Between 1884 and 1886, <mask> attended the Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art and Design—in Thomas Street.In March 1888 the family moved to 3 Blenheim Road in Bedford Park  where they would remain until 1902. The rent on the house in 1888 was £50 a year. He began writing his first works when he was seventeen; these included a poem—heavily influenced by <mask> Shelley—that describes a magician who set up a throne in central Asia. Other pieces from this period include a draft of a play about a bishop, a monk, and a woman accused of paganism by local shepherds, as well as love-poems and narrative lyrics on German knights. The early works were both conventional and, according to the critic Charles Johnston, "utterly unIrish", seeming to come out of a "vast murmurous gloom of dreams". Although <mask>'s early works drew heavily on Shelley, Edmund Spenser, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish mythology and folklore and the writings of <mask>. In later life, <mask> paid tribute to <mask> by describing him as one of the "great artificers of God who uttered great truths to a little clan".In 1891, <mask> published John Sherman and "Dhoya", one a novella, the other a story. The influence of <mask> is evident in <mask>'s theory of aesthetics, especially in his stage plays, and runs like a motif through his early works. The theory of masks, developed by <mask> in his polemic The Decay of Lying can clearly be seen in <mask>'s play The Player Queen, while the more sensual characterisation of Salomé, in <mask>'s play of the same name, provides the template for the changes <mask> made in his later plays, especially in <mask>le's Strand (1904), Deirdre (1907), and his dance play The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934). Young poet

The family returned to London in 1887. In March 1890 <mask> joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and with Ernest Rhys co-founded the Rhymers' Club, a group of London-based poets who met regularly in a Fleet Street tavern to recite their verse. <mask> later sought to mythologize the collective, calling it the "Tragic Generation" in his autobiography, and published two anthologies of the Rhymers' work, the first one in 1892 and the second one in 1894. He collaborated with Edwin Ellis on the first complete edition of <mask>'s works, in the process rediscovering a forgotten poem, "Vala, or, the Four Zoas".<mask> had a lifelong interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. He read extensively on the subjects throughout his life, became a member of the paranormal research organisation "The Ghost Club" (in 1911) and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. As early as 1892, he wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my <mask> book, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to exist. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write." His mystical interests—also inspired by a study of Hinduism, under the Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and the occult—formed much of the basis of his late poetry. Some critics disparaged this aspect of <mask>'s work. His first significant poem was "The Island of Statues", a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser and Shelley for its poetic models.The piece was serialized in the Dublin University Review. <mask> wished to include it in his first collection, but it was deemed too long, and in fact, was never republished in his lifetime. Quinx Books published the poem in complete form for the first time in 2014. His first solo publication was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (1886), which comprised a print run of 100 copies paid for by his father. This was followed by the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as the mid-1880s. The long title poem contains, in the words of his biographer R. F. Foster, "obscure Gaelic names, striking repetitions [and] an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections":
We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,
<mask>, Sceolan, and Lomair,
On a morning misty and mild and fair. The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees,
And in the blossoms hung the bees.We rode in sadness above Lough Lean,
For our best were dead on Gavra's green. "The Wanderings of Oisin" is based on the lyrics of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets. The poem took two years to complete and was one of the few works from this period that he did not disown in his maturity. Oisin introduces what was to become one of his most important themes: the appeal of the life of contemplation over the appeal of the life of action. Following the work, <mask> never again attempted another long poem. His other early poems, which are meditations on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects, include Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). The covers of these volumes were illustrated by <mask>'s friend Althea Gyles.During 1885, <mask> was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic Order. The society held its first meeting on 16 June, with <mask> acting as its chairman. The same year, the Dublin Theosophical lodge was opened in conjunction with Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee, who travelled from the Theosophical Society in London to lecture. <mask> attended his first séance the following year. He later became heavily involved with the Theosophy and with hermeticism, particularly with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. During séances held from 1912, a spirit calling itself "Leo Africanus" apparently claimed it was <mask>'s Daemon or anti-self, inspiring some of the speculations in Per Amica Silentia Lunae. He was admitted into the Golden Dawn in March 1890 and took the magical motto —translated as 'Devil is God inverted'.He was an active recruiter for the sect's Isis-Urania Temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. Although he reserved a distaste for abstract and dogmatic religions founded around personality cults, he was attracted to the type of people he met at the Golden Dawn. He was involved in the Order's power struggles, both with Farr and Macgregor Mathers, and was involved when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia during the "Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn ceased and splintered into various offshoots, <mask> remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921. Maud Gonne

In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, a 23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish nationalist. She was eighteen months younger than <mask> and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne admired "The Island of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance.<mask> began an obsessive infatuation, and she had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter. In later years he admitted, "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes." <mask>'s love was unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism. In 1891 he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed marriage, but was rejected. He later admitted that from that point "the troubling of my life began". <mask> proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his dismay, married the Irish nationalist Major <mask>.His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met in 1894, and parted from in 1897. <mask> derided <mask> in letters and in poetry. He was horrified by Gonne's marriage, at losing his muse to another man; in addition, her conversion to Catholicism before marriage offended him; <mask> was Protestant/agnostic. He worried his muse would come under the influence of the

masks:
William Butler Yeats
Yeats
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Yeats
William Butler
Yeats
John Butler
Yeats
Yeats
Benjamin Yeats
William
Mary Butler
Butler
Butler
William
John Yeats
William
William
John Yeats
Butler Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
William
Yeats
William
Yeats
William
Percy Bysshe
Yeats
William Blake
Yeats
Blake
Yeats
Oscar Wilde
Yeats
Wilde
Yeats
Wilde
Yeats
On Bai
Yeats
Yeats
William Blake
Yeats
Blake
Yeats
Yeats
Bran
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
John MacBride
Yeats
MacBride
Yeats


texts:
 priests and do their bidding. Gonne's marriage to <mask> was a disaster. This pleased <mask>, as Gonne began to visit him in London. After the birth of her son, Seán <mask>, in 1904, Gonne and <mask> agreed to end the marriage, although they were unable to agree on the child's welfare.Despite the use of intermediaries, a divorce case ensued in Paris in 1905. Gonne made a series of allegations against her husband with <mask> as her main 'second', though he did not attend court or travel to France. A divorce was not granted, for the only accusation that held up in court was that <mask> had been drunk once during the marriage. A separation was granted, with Gonne having custody of the baby and <mask> having visiting rights. <mask>'s friendship with Gonne ended, yet, in Paris in 1908, they finally consummated their relationship. "The long years of fidelity rewarded at last" was how another of his lovers described the event. <mask> was less sentimental and later remarked that "the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul."The relationship did not develop into a new phase after their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to the poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could not continue as they had been: "I have prayed so hard to have all earthly desire taken from my love for you and dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed and I am praying still that the bodily desire for me may be taken from you too." By January 1909, Gonne was sending <mask> letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex. Nearly twenty years later, <mask> recalled the night with Gonne in his poem "A Man Young and Old":
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck. In 1896, <mask> was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged <mask>'s nationalism and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although he was influenced by French Symbolism, <mask> concentrated on an identifiably Irish content and this inclination was reinforced by his involvement with a new generation of younger and emerging Irish authors. Together with Lady Gregory, Martyn, and other writers including J. M. Synge, Seán O'Casey, and Padraic Colum, <mask> was one of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival" movement.Apart from these creative writers, much of the impetus for the Revival came from the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde, later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired. Abbey Theatre

In 1899, <mask>, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and George Moore founded the Irish Literary Theatre to promote Irish plays. The ideals of the Abbey were derived from the avant-garde French theatre, which sought to express the "ascendancy of the playwright rather than the actor-manager à l'anglais." The group's manifesto, which <mask> wrote, declared, "We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted & imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory ... & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed." <mask>'s interest in the classics and his defiance of English censorship were also fueled by a tour of America he took between 1903 and 1904. Stopping to deliver a lecture at the University of Notre Dame, he learned about the student production of the Oedipus Rex.This play was banned in England, an act he viewed as hypocritical as denounced as part of 'British Puritanism'. He contrasted this with the artistic freedom of the Catholicism found at Notre Dame, which had allowed such a play with themes such as incest and parricide. He desired to stage a production of the Oedipus Rex in Dublin. The collective survived for about two years but was unsuccessful. Working with the Irish brothers with theatrical experience, <mask> and Frank Fay, <mask>'s unpaid but independently wealthy secretary Annie Horniman, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr, the group established the Irish National Theatre Society. Along with Synge, they acquired property in Dublin and on 27 December 1904 opened the Abbey Theatre. <mask>'s play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Lady Gregory's Spreading the News were featured on the opening night.<mask> remained involved with the Abbey until his death, both as a member of the board and a prolific playwright. In 1902, he helped set up the Dun Emer Press to publish work by writers associated with the Revival. This became the Cuala Press in 1904, and inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, sought to "find work for Irish hands in the making of beautiful things." From then until its closure in 1946, the press—which was run by the poet's sisters—produced over 70 titles; 48 of them books by <mask> himself. <mask> met the American poet Ezra Pound in 1909. Pound had travelled to London at least partly to meet the older man, whom he considered "the only poet worthy of serious study." From that year until 1916, the two men wintered in the Stone Cottage at Ashdown Forest, with Pound nominally acting as <mask>'s secretary.The relationship got off to a rocky start when Pound arranged for the publication in the magazine Poetry of some of Yeats's verse with Pound's own unauthorised alterations. These changes reflected Pound's distaste for Victorian prosody. A more indirect influence was the scholarship on Japanese Noh plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa's widow, which provided <mask> with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modelled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916. The emergence of a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the mostly Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made <mask> reassess some of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, 1916" ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), <mask> faces his own failure to recognise the merits of the leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude towards their ordinary backgrounds and lives. <mask> was close to Lady Gregory and her home place of Coole Park, County Galway.He would often visit and stay there as it was a central meeting place for people who supported the resurgence of Irish literature and cultural traditions. His poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole" was written there, between 1916 and 1917. He wrote prefaces for two books of Irish mythological tales, compiled by Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), and Gods and Fighting Men (1904). In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "One must not expect in these stories the epic lineaments, the many incidents, woven into one great event of, let us say the War for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne or that of the last gathering at Muirthemne." Politics

<mask> was an Irish nationalist, who sought a kind of traditional lifestyle articulated through poems such as 'The Fisherman'. But as his life progressed, he sheltered much of his revolutionary spirit and distanced himself from the intense political landscape until 1922, when he was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State. In the earlier part of his life, <mask> was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.In the 1930s <mask> was fascinated with the authoritarian, anti-democratic, nationalist movements of Europe, and he composed several marching songs for the Blueshirts, although they were never used. He was a fierce opponent of individualism and political liberalism and saw the fascist movements as a triumph of public order and the needs of the national collective over petty individualism. On the other hand, he was also an elitist who abhorred the idea of mob-rule, and saw democracy as a threat to good governance and public order. After the Blueshirt movement began to falter in Ireland, he distanced himself somewhat from his previous views, but maintained a preference for authoritarian and nationalist leadership. D. P. Moran called him a minor poet and "crypto-Protestant conman." Marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees

By 1916, <mask> was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His rival, <mask>, had been executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, so <mask> hoped that his widow, Maud Gonne, might remarry.His final proposal to Gonne took place in mid-1916. Gonne's history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life—including chloroform addiction and her troubled marriage to <mask>—made her a potentially unsuitable wife; biographer R. F. Foster has observed that <mask>'s last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her. <mask> proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down. According to Foster, "when he duly asked Maud to marry him and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter." Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated <mask>.When Gonne took action to divorce <mask> in 1905, the court heard allegations that he had sexually assaulted Iseult, then eleven. At fifteen, she proposed to <mask>. In 1917, he proposed to Iseult but was rejected. That September, <mask> proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends—"George ... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October. Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of <mask>'s feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon.The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael. Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women, Georgie herself wrote to her husband "When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were." During the first years of marriage, they experimented with automatic writing; she contacted a variety of spirits and guides they called "Instructors" while in a trance. The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of philosophy and history, which the couple developed into an exposition using geometrical shapes: phases, cones, and gyres. <mask> devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision (1925). In 1924, he wrote to his publisher T<mask> Laurie, admitting: "I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books". Nobel Prize

In December 1923, <mask> was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".He was aware of the symbolic value of an Irish winner so soon after Ireland had gained independence, and sought to highlight the fact at each available opportunity. His reply to many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: "I consider that this honour has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe's welcome to the Free State." <mask> used the occasion of his acceptance lecture at the Royal Academy of Sweden to present himself as a standard-bearer of Irish nationalism and Irish cultural independence. As he remarked, "The theatres of Dublin were empty buildings hired by the English travelling companies, and we wanted Irish plays and Irish players. When we thought of these plays we thought of everything that was romantic and poetical because the nationalism we had called up—the nationalism every generation had called up in moments of discouragement—was romantic and poetical." The prize led to a significant increase in the sales of his books, as his publishers Macmillan sought to capitalise on the publicity. For the first time he had money, and he was able to repay not only his own debts but those of his father.Old age and death
By early 1925, <mask>'s health had stabilised, and he had completed most of the writing for A Vision (dated 1925, it actually appeared in January 1926, when he almost immediately started rewriting it for a second version). He had been appointed to the first Irish Senate in 1922, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925. Early in his tenure, a debate on divorce arose, and <mask> viewed the issue as primarily a confrontation between the emerging Roman Catholic ethos and the Protestant minority. When the Roman Catholic Church weighed in with a blanket refusal to consider their anti position, The Irish Times countered that a measure to outlaw divorce would alienate Protestants and "crystallise" the partition of Ireland. In response, <mask> delivered a series of speeches that attacked the "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy, likening their campaign tactics to those of "medieval

masks:
MacBride
Yeats
MacBride
MacBride
Yeats
MacBride
MacBride
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
William
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
John MacBride
Yeats
MacBride
Yeats
Yeats
MacBride
MacBride
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
. Werner
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats


texts:
 Spain." "Marriage is not to us a Sacrament, but, upon the other hand, the love of a man and woman, and the inseparable physical desire, are sacred. This conviction has come to us through ancient philosophy and modern literature, and it seems to us a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who hate each other... to live together, and it is to us no remedy to permit them to part if neither can re-marry."The resulting debate has been described as one of <mask>'s "supreme public moments", and began his ideological move away from pluralism towards religious confrontation. His language became more forceful; the Jesuit Father Peter Finlay was described by <mask> as a man of "monstrous discourtesy", and he lamented that "It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation". During his time in the Senate, <mask> further warned his colleagues: "If you show that this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the North... You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation". He memorably said of his fellow Irish Protestants, "we are no petty people". In 1924, he chaired a coinage committee charged with selecting a set of designs for the first currency of the Irish Free State. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery of a young state's currency, he sought a form that was "elegant, racy of the soil, and utterly unpolitical". When the house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, <mask> was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had led to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images.He retired from the Senate in 1928 because of ill health. Towards the end of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, which led some to question whether democracy could cope with deep economic difficulty—<mask> seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of the First World War, he became sceptical about the efficacy of democratic government, and anticipated political reconstruction in Europe through totalitarian rule. His later association with Pound drew him towards <mask>, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions. He wrote three "marching songs"—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirts. At the age of 69 he was 'rejuvenated' by the Steinach operation which was performed on 6 April 1934 by Norman Haire. For the last five years of his life <mask> found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women.During this time, <mask> was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin. As in his earlier life, <mask> found erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and, despite age and ill-health, he remained a prolific writer. In a letter of 1935, <mask> noted: "I find my present weakness made worse by the strange second puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination. If I write poetry it will be unlike anything I have done". In 1936, he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935. From 1935 to 1936 he travelled to the Western Mediterranean island of Majorca with Indian-born Shri Purohit Swami and from there the two of them performed the majority of the work in translating the principal Upanishads from Sanskrit into common English; the resulting work, The Ten Principal Upanishads, was published in 1938. He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28 January 1939, aged 73.He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Attempts had been made at Roquebrune to dissuade the family from proceeding with the removal of the remains to Ireland due to the uncertainty of their identity. His body had earlier been exhumed and transferred to the ossuary. <mask> and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was that he be buried quickly in France with a minimum of fuss. According to George, "His actual words were 'If I die, bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year's time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo'." In September 1948, <mask>'s body was moved to the churchyard of St Columba's Church, Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha. The person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Seán <mask>, son of Maud Gonne <mask>, and then Minister of External Affairs.His epitaph is taken from the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems:
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by! French ambassador Stanislas Ostroróg was involved in returning the remains of the poet from France to Ireland in 1948; in a letter to the European director of the Foreign Ministry in Paris, "Ostrorog tells how <mask>'s son Michael sought official help in locating the poet's remains. Neither <mask> nor <mask>, the Irish foreign minister who organised the ceremony, wanted to know the details of how the remains were collected, Ostrorog notes. He repeatedly urges caution and discretion and says the Irish ambassador in Paris should not be informed." <mask>'s body was exhumed in 1946 and the remains were moved to an ossuary and mixed with other remains. The French Foreign Ministry authorized Ostrorog to secretly cover the cost of repatriation from his slush fund.Authorities were worried about the fact that the much-loved poet's remains were thrown into a communal grave, causing embarrassment for both Ireland and France. Per a letter from Ostroróg to his superiors, "Mr Rebouillat, (a) forensic doctor in Roquebrune would be able to reconstitute a skeleton presenting all the characteristics of the deceased." Style

<mask> is considered one of the key twentieth-century English-language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities. Unlike the modernists who experimented with free verse, <mask> was a master of the traditional forms.The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing old. In his poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion", he describes the inspiration for these late works:
Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee near Gort in County Galway (where <mask> had his summer home since 1919) for the last time. Much of the remainder of his life was lived outside Ireland, although he did lease Riversdale house in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham in 1932. He wrote prolifically through his final years, and published poetry, plays, and prose. In 1938, he attended the Abbey for the final time to see the premiere of his play Purgatory.His Autobiographies of <mask> <mask> was published that same year. The preface for the English translation of   Rabindranath Tagore's  Gitanjali (Song Offering)(for which Tagore won the Nobel prize in Literature) was written by <mask> in 1913. While <mask>'s early poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore, his later work was engaged with more contemporary issues, and his style underwent a dramatic transformation. His work can be divided into three general periods. The early poems are lushly pre-Raphaelite in tone, self-consciously ornate, and, at times, according to unsympathetic critics, stilted. <mask> began by writing epic poems such as The Isle of Statues and The Wanderings of Oisin. His other early poems are lyrics on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects.<mask>'s middle period saw him abandon the pre-Raphaelite character of his early work and attempt to turn himself into a Landor-style social ironist. Critics characterize his middle work as supple and muscular in its rhythms and sometimes harshly modernist, while others find the poems barren and weak in imaginative power. <mask>'s later work found new imaginative inspiration in the mystical system he began to work out for himself under the influence of spiritualism. In many ways, this poetry is a return to the vision of his earlier work. The opposition between the worldly-minded man of the sword and the spiritually minded man of God, the theme of The Wanderings of Oisin, is reproduced in A Dialogue Between Self and Soul. Some critics hold that <mask> spanned the transition from the nineteenth century into twentieth-century modernism in poetry much as Pablo Picasso did in painting; others question whether late Yeats has much in common with modernists of the Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot variety. Modernists read the well-known poem "The Second Coming" as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation, but it also expresses <mask>'s apocalyptic mystical theories and is shaped by the 1890s.His most important collections of poetry started with The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). In imagery, <mask>'s poetry became sparer and more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1933), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry. <mask>'s mystical inclinations, informed by Hinduism, theosophical beliefs and the occult, provided much of the basis of his late poetry, which some critics have judged as lacking in intellectual credibility. The metaphysics of <mask>'s late works must be read in relation to his system of esoteric fundamentals in A Vision (1925). Works

Legacy
Yeats is commemorated in Sligo town by a statue, created in 1989 by sculptor Rowan Gillespie. On the 50th anniversary of the poet's death, it was erected outside the Ulster Bank, at the corner of Stephen Street and Markievicz Road.<mask> had remarked on receiving his Nobel Prize that the Royal Palace in Stockholm "resembled the Ulster Bank in Sligo". Across the river is the Yeats Memorial Building, home to the Sligo Yeats Society. Standing Figure: Knife Edge by Henry Moore is displayed in the W. B. Yeats Memorial Garden at St Stephen's Green in Dublin. There is a blue plaque dedicated to <mask> at Balscadden House on the Balscadden Road in Howth. This was his cottage home from 1880-83. In 1957 the London County Council erected a plaque at his former residence on 23 Fitzroy Road, Primrose Hill, London. Adaptations
Composer Marcus Paus' choral work The Stolen Child (2009) is based on poetry by <mask>.Critic Stephen Eddins described it as "sumptuously lyrical and magically wild, and [...] beautifully [capturing] the alluring mystery and danger and melancholy" of <mask>. Argentine composer Julia Stilman-Lasansky based her cantata No. 4 on text by <mask>. Notes

References

Sources

External links

 <mask> <mask> on Magic & The Occult, edited by Claudio Rocchetti, Black Letter Press, 2019
 The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of <mask> Yeats

 List of Works

 <mask> Yeats: Profile and Poems at Poets.org
 Yeats's correspondence and other archival records at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center
 Collection of Yeats family papers at John J. Burns Library, Boston College
 Yeats and Mysticism, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Roy Foster, <mask> and <mask> (In Our Time, 31 January 2002)
 Yeats and Irish Politics, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Roy Foster, Fran <mask> & <mask> (In Our Time, 17 April 2008)
W.B. Yeats Collection, 1875–1965 and Maud Gonne and W.B. <mask> Papers at Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University
Yeats family letters at Columbia University.Rare Book & Manuscript Library

1865 births
1939 deaths
19th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
19th-century Irish poets
20th-century Irish male writers
20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Irish poets
Abbey Theatre
Alumni of the National College of Art and Design
Anglican poets
Anglo-Irish artists
Anthologists
Burials in the Republic of Ireland
<mask> of the Royal Society of Literature
Formalist poets
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Independent members of Seanad Éireann
Irish Anglicans
Irish Dominion League
Irish expatriates in France
Irish fantasy writers
Irish folklorists
Irish male dramatists and playwrights
Irish male poets
Irish Nobel laureates
Irish occult writers
Irish occultists
Members of the 1922 Seanad
Members of the 1925 Seanad
Modernist poets
Modernist theatre
Nobel laureates in Literature
People educated at The High School, Dublin
People from Sandymount
People from West Kensington
Protestant Irish nationalists
Sonneteers
Symbolist dramatists and playwrights
Symbolist poets
Victorian writers
<mask>

masks:
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Benito Mussolini
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
MacBride
MacBride
Yeats
Michael Yeats
Sean MacBride
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
William Butler
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
W B
Yeats
William Butler
William Butler
Warwick Gould
Brenda Maddox
Brearton
Warwick Gould
Yeats
William Fellows
William Blake


texts:
<mask><mask>, (?1774–1827) also known as <mask>, W. J. Richards and W. O<mask>, was a police informer and supposed agent provocateur at a time of social unrest, immediately after the Napoleonic Wars. The Luddite protests of 1811–15 had been followed by the Spa Fields riots of 1816, the Blanketeers demonstration in March 1817 and soon afterwards the Pentridge or Pentrich rising, in June, and it was a time when many of Britain’s middle and upper classes saw a genuine risk of revolution. The system of police informers was not new, but had largely escaped popular censure during the wars against France. In peacetime, it was more difficult to justify. Early life and family
Although some early newspaper reports described <mask> as Welsh and a native of either Cardigan or Pembroke, in evidence to the Home Office he claimed to be from Pontesbury in Shropshire, England. He may have been baptised there in October 1774. He married Harriet Dear of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, and they had a son.By the time he came to public notice he had been living for thirty years in London, and had worked as a carpenter and builder, and also latterly as a surveyor. He had not done well as a builder and he declared that he had lost money. He was described as "a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and a full face, a little pitted with the small-pox. His usual dress ... was a light fashionable coloured brown coat, black waistcoat, dark-blue mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots". Career as informer
On 28 March 1817 <mask> approached the Home Office offering his services as an informer. He was accepted by Lord Sidmouth and on 23 April began a tour of the North and Midlands, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining petitions for Parliamentary Reform and representing himself as a "Liberal patriot". To the more staid reformers he represented himself as intent on organising a large petition, while insinuating that stronger measures might soon be necessary.To the more violent reformers, angry about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, he spoke of the use of physical force in London, where seventy thousand men were allegedly ready to rise, as soon as plans were complete. Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Leeds, Halifax, Royton, Middleton, Manchester, Barnsley and Nottingham were all visited, during which time he wrote reports for the Home Office. <mask> toured again in June and began making plans with locals for revolution; a large meeting was to be held on 6 June 1817 in Thornhill Lees, a district of Dewsbury. However on 4 June, he slipped away and met General Byng, the commander of troops in the North and gave him advance warning of the Thornhill Lees gathering. The meeting of would-be revolutionaries, including <mask>, was surrounded and all were arrested by the troops. A few hours later however, <mask> was spotted in Wakefield talking to a liveried footman, by a tradesman called Dickinson, that he had earlier attempted to recruit. Dickinson asked him how he had managed to escape the troops of General Byng, and he gave an embarrassed answer and hurriedly left the town by stagecoach for Nottingham.Dickinson then spoke to the liveried footman who readily admitted to being one of General Byng’s servants. All was now clear; <mask> was not a revolutionary, but instead worked for the authorities. Word spread and the editor and reform campaigner Edward Baines of the Leeds Mercury was soon in the know. By the time <mask> reached Nottingham, some rumours of treachery had already reached the town and he was given a gruelling cross-examination that he was lucky to survive. <mask> and the Pentrich revolutionaries were not at Nottingham however and the news that <mask> was a spy, did not reach Pentrich in time to stop its uprising. Pentrich rising
Following the brief Pentridge or Pentrich rising on the night of 9/10 June 1817 on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border, three rebel leaders, <mask>, Isaac Ludlam and <mask>, were captured. They were subsequently tried for treason, hanged and posthumously beheaded.Others who had taken part in the uprising were transported to Australia. A few days after the uprising, in a series of astonishing articles in the Leeds Mercury beginning on 14 June 1817, Edward Baines alleged that the Pentrich events had in fact been incited by the earlier activities of "<mask> the Spy", who had been known to the rebels as "London delegate" <mask>. Baines also alleged that the authorities, had known from <mask> that the rising was about to happen, but had let it go ahead in order to advance their own political ends. Baines revealed that <mask> was actually W. J. Richards, "a spy" working for Lord Sidmouth's Home Office. The newspaper article of 14 June was read out almost in its entirety by Francis Burdett on the 16th in the House of Commons, where it gave rise to sensational debates which were repeated several times. The accusation, of course, was that <mask> the Home Office informer was, in fact, the moving spirit in the Pentrich disturbances, and that without him they would not have taken place at all. Although <mask> was not present at the uprising, debate as to his rôle and responsibility for it has continued ever since.While the use of informers had become routine on the part of magistrates during the Luddite period, the practice was regarded by a wide section of public opinion as being alien to the spirit of English law, and the exposure in the Leeds Mercury of <mask>’s role, as an agent provocateur, astounded public opinion. Earl Fitzwilliam, the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, wrote to Lord Sidmouth on 14 June about the uprising, squarely blaming <mask> for what had happened:
There certainly prevails very generally in the country a strong and decided opinion that most of the events that have recently occurred in the country are to be attributed to the presence and active agitation of Mr. <mask>. He is considered as the main spring from which every movement has taken its rise. All the mischievous in the country have considered themselves as subordinate members of a great leading body of revolutionists in London, as cooperating with that body for one general purpose, and in this view to be under its instructions and directions, communicated by some delegate appointed for the purpose. Had not then a person pretending to come from that body and for that purpose, made his appearance in the country, it is not assuming too much to say that probably no movement whatever would have occurred - it does not follow that a dangerous spirit could not have been found lurking in any breast, but that that spirit would not have found its way into action. E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class (1963) more succinctly called <mask> the "archetype of the Radical Judas". Move to Cape Town
It was plainly now in the best interests of the authorities for <mask> to leave the political scene, and in 1819 Henry Goulburn, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Cape Colony Governor Lord Charles Somerset ordering that a grant of land be made to a "Mr <mask> whose object in proceeding to the Cape of Good Hope is to settle in that Colony".<mask> arrived at Cape Town in 1820, where it was generally believed that he was the notorious police informer. Here he operated as a builder and contractor until about 1825. His friendship with <mask>, Government Inspector of buildings, led Melvill to recommend him as his deputy in 1821. During 1821 he acted as surveyor in the Cape Town suburb of Newlands. He was commissioned to draw the first designs for an English Church, St George's, for the 1820 settlers in Grahamstown, completed in 1828. Death
<mask> died as "<mask> <mask>" on 2 February 1827, and was buried in Green Point Cemetery on the outskirts of Cape Town. He left a will, dated 10 December 1824, in which he described himself as "a native of Ponsonbury (sic) in the County of Salop, aged about fifty, and married to Harriet born Dear of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire".He left "less than 6000 guilders" and a gold watch to his wife and son. Legacy
<mask>'s historical significance arguably lies less in his activities than in his exposure as an officially sanctioned spy. Readers of the Leeds Mercury and the public at large, were outraged that Lord Liverpool's Government, having been alerted by <mask>, allowed the Penrich rising to continue, rather than nipping it in the bud. The public indignation generated by the spy's activities was one more step on the road to reform, and the newspaper revelations made sure of a quite different outcome to that which had been hoped for by the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. In literature
Police informers are the subject of Charles Lamb's deeply disapproving poem of 1820, "The Three Graves", which contains the lines:

<mask> was well known to the public for his role as an informer in the Spa Fields riots; and George Edwards for a similar role in the Cato Street Conspiracy. References

English spies
1774 births
1827 deaths
19th-century spies

masks:
William J
. Oliver
Oliver the Spy
. Jones
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Jeremiah Brandreth
Oliver
Jeremiah Brandreth
William Turner
Oliver
William Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
Oliver
William Jones
Oliver
John Melvill
Oliver
William Oliver
Jones
Oliver
Oliver
John Castle


texts:
<mask>  (24 January 1935 – 8 February 2022) was an English television presenter and author. He was the original quizmaster on University Challenge, which initially ran from 1962 to 1987. Early life and education
<mask> was born in London on 24 January 1935. He was the elder son of Lieutenant-Colonel <mask>  by his marriage in 1934 to Mary ("Midi") Louisa Hermione O'Neill. <mask> was  educated at Sunningdale School in Berkshire before winning scholarships to both Eton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1955), where he read English literature. He initially wanted to become an actor, though found it tiresome to have to play the same part for more than a week, so instead turned to writing. While at Magdalene, he initially submitted scripts to the Footlights sketch troupe, though they were never performed.However, he wrote a college review in his second year, which was seen by the producer Michael Codron. He liked it enough to put it on in the West End as a musical called Share My Lettuce, in 1957. It was performed by Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams (with music by Keith Statham and Patrick Gowers). He then spent a year as a Commonwealth Fund scholar at Yale University (1958–59). He carried out his National Service in the Grenadier Guards, where he spent six months guarding the Queen at Buckingham Palace, before being posted to Germany. After completing his National Service, he became employed as a theatre critic, firstly for The Spectator, and then The Observor. He met his wife, Christina, at Cambridge, and they married in 1965.Ancestry
Gascoigne's family were originally Norman, arriving in the early 13th century. Gascoigne's mother was a daughter of Captain, the Hon. Arthur O'Neill and Lady Annabel Hungerford Crewe-Milnes. His father was the son of Brigadier-General Sir Ernest Frederick Orby <mask> and Laura Cicely, daughter of General Edward Henry Clive, of that family of Styche Hall, Shropshire, from which also came the soldier and administrator of India Robert Clive (Clive of India). Gascoigne's great-grandfathers included Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe, and Edward O'Neill, 2nd Baron O'Neill. He was a nephew of Sir <mask>, who was in charge of the Household Division during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and of Terence O'Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (1963–1969). Gascoigne was a direct descendant of the 18th-century Lord Mayor of London Sir Crisp Gascoyne and the Tory politicians <mask> Gascoyne (the elder) and Isaac Gascoyne.Isaac's son General Ernest Frederick Gascoyne, of Raby Hall, Liverpool (1796–1867), was his great-great-great-grandfather. The name <mask> was the surname of the Lord Mayor's wife, and was given to their son. University Challenge
Gascoigne was the original presenter (from 1962) of the television quiz show University Challenge, based on the US series College Bowl. He held the position for 25 years, until the end of the initial run in 1987. As well as presenting the show, in its initial series he also set all the questions. His questioning manner was regarded as firm yet polite. Phrases he often used which became catchphrases include: "Your starter for ten, no conferring", "fingers on buzzers” and "I'll have to hurry you."The show was initially only set for 13 episodes, but it was such a hit that Gascoigne eventually presented 913 episodes. A number of notable people appeared, before going on to find fame in their respective careers, including Stephen Fry and Miriam Margoyles. When the show was revived in 1994, he refused to apply to present it again, as he was now involved with other projects. In 1984, Gascoigne was parodied by Griff Rhys Jones in the alternative comedy series The Young Ones, in an episode entitled "Bambi". Adrian Edmondson, a regular cast member of The Young Ones, later appeared on the real University Challenge. In 1998, Gascoigne presented a parody named Universe Challenge based on the sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf. Gascoigne was also portrayed in the 2006 feature film, Starter for Ten by the actor Mark Gatiss.Television and books
<mask> was the author of Murgatreud's Empire, a 1972 satirical novel concerning an entrepreneur who finds an island of pygmies, and trades them arms for treasure, recreating the development of European medieval weaponry and armour. This was originally written as a script, although the play was abandoned due to the impossibility to find suitable performers for a cast of forty pygmies. In 1977, Gascoigne wrote and presented The Christians, a 13-hour television documentary series on the history of Christianity, produced by Granada Television and broadcast on ITV. The same year he wrote a companion book, under the same title, with photography by his wife, <mask>, published by Jonathan Cape. In 2003 it was revised and republished as A Brief History of Christianity by Robinson Publishing. Gascoigne wrote Quest for the Golden Hare, a 1983 account of the internationally publicised treasure hunt associated with the publication in 1979 of Kit Williams' book Masquerade. On 8 August 1979, Gascoigne was witness to the burial by Williams of a unique jewelled, solid gold hare pendant in an earthenware jar "somewhere in Britain".The book documents the search and a scandal associated with finding it. In 1987, Gascoigne presented a documentary series of six 30-minute programmes on Victorian history, Victorian Values, produced by Granada Television. The programmes looked at how Victorian society put in place the infrastructure of the modern welfare state. In 1988, Gascoigne devised and presented a BBC Two arts quiz called Connoisseur, for which he also set the questions. Gascoigne was the writer and presenter for the TV series The Great Moghuls (1990), a study of the Mughal Empire of India. The series was based on <mask>'s 1971 book of the same name, which features photographs by his wife. Other activities
Gascoigne established an online history encyclopaedia, HistoryWorld, based on British history.He had already published a hard copy of this encyclopaedia, though saw the internet as an opportunity to reach millions more than the book alone. He also established TimeSearch, which presents multiple searchable timelines collected from various websites. In August 2014, Gascoigne was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. On the death of his great-aunt Mary Innes-Ker, Duchess of Roxburghe, in 2014, Gascoigne inherited an estate at West Horsley, Surrey, including West Horsley Place, a large country house dating from the 16th century. Gascoigne sold some of the late Duchess's possessions using the proceeds to restore the house, which was followed by the building of an opera house in its grounds, the Theatre in the Woods, which serves as the home base of the Grange Park Opera. An original pencil and chalk study for the painting Flaming June by Sir Frederic Leighton was found on the back of a bedroom door in the house. Art historians had known a sketch existed as it had been included in an art magazine in 1895, but did not know who owned it; it was probably bought by the Duchess's paternal grandfather after Leighton's death.Since 2019, West Horsley Place has been used as the filming location for the fictional Button House in the BBC TV comedy series Ghosts. External interests
Gascoigne was elected in 1976 as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was a trustee of the National Gallery, a trustee of the Tate Gallery, a member of the council of the National Trust, and a member of the board of directors of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He was also a patron of the Museum of Richmond. Personal life, honours and death
Gascoigne was married, for 57 years, to Christina (née Ditchburn), daughter of civil servant Alfred Henry Ditchburn, . He met Christina at Cambridge. They lived in Richmond, London, from the late 1960s.She is an artist working in ceramics, silks and other media. The couple did not have any children together. Gascoigne was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to the Arts. Following a short illness, he died in Richmond on 8 February 2022, at the age of 87. Stephen Fry led the tributes to Gascoigne, saying he was "such an elegant, intelligent man". Victoria Coren Mitchell, host of BBC quiz show Only Connect, said: "No quiz host has ever seemed more like they could answer all the questions themselves." Selected publications
 1962: Twentieth Century Drama, London: Hutchinson University Library
 1968: Leda Had a Little Swan  (play, cancelled on the day before opening, in New York, after fourteen previews)
 1968: World Theatre: An Illustrated History, Ebury Press
 1971: The Great Moghuls (with photographs by <mask>), London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Harper & Row
 1973: The Treasures and Dynasties of China (with photographs by <mask> and Derrick Witty), Jonathan Cape.

masks:
Arthur Bamber Gascoigne
Gascoigne
Derek Ernest Frederick Orby Gascoigne
Gascoigne
Gascoigne
Julian Gascoigne
Bamber
Bamber
Gascoigne
Christina Gascoigne
Gascoigne
Christina Gascoigne
Christina Gascoigne


texts:
<mask>  (born 11 September 1946) is a British writer and illustrator of children's books, primarily picture books. <mask> has written or illustrated over fifty books, and received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2000. From 2009 to 2011 he was Children's Laureate. <mask> won two Kate Greenaway Medals from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal (1955–2005), a panel named his 1983 medalist Gorilla one of the top ten winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite. Life and work
<mask> was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire. His parents, Jack and <mask>, ran a pub called the Red Lion (now the Wyke Lion) at Hellfire Corner between Bradford, and Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, and <mask> and his older brother Michael grew up there.As a young boy, he enjoyed art, and used to draw with his father. He also played rugby and cricket. His career ambition was then to be a journalist, a cartoonist, or a boxer. He studied graphic design at Leeds College of Art, where he graduated in 1967. When he finished school <mask> intended to become a painter, but being short of money he took a job as a medical illustrator, producing detailed paintings of operations for Manchester Royal Infirmary. After three years he grew tired of the job's repetitiveness and moved on to design greeting cards for Gordon Fraser. He designed cards for five years before he started writing and illustrating his own books.<mask>'s debut book both as writer and as illustrator was Through the Magic Mirror, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1976. A Walk in the Park followed next year and gained a cult following and Bear Hunt (1979) was more successful commercially. His breakthrough came with Gorilla, published by Julia MacRae in 1983, based on one of his greeting cards. For it he won the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. He was a highly commended runner-up for an edition of Alice in Wonderland (1988), he won the 1992 Medal for Zoo and he was again highly commended for Willy's Pictures (2000). Gorillas are frequently featured in <mask>'s books, as he has said he is fascinated by them. He was once asked to present a children's programme, whilst sitting in a cage of gorillas, and despite being badly bitten by one of them he completed the interview before being taken to hospital.his character "Willy" is said to be based on himself. <mask> and writer Annalena McAfee won the 1985 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, Picture Book category, for Mein Papi, nur meiner! (The Visitors Who Came to Stay). He also won the Kurt Maschler Award "Emil" three times, which annually (1982 to 1999) recognised one British "work of imagination for children, in which text and illustration are integrated so that each enhances and balances the other." <mask> was a winner for Gorilla (Julia MacRae Books, 1983), Alice's Adventure in Wonderland (MacRae, 1988) and Voices in the Park (Doubleday, 1998), as the illustrator of all three books and the writer of two. In 2000 <mask> was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, an international award given to an illustrator for their body of work. This prize is the highest honour a children's writer or illustrator can win and <mask> was the first British illustrator to receive the award.In 2001–2002 <mask> took a job as writer and illustrator at Tate Britain, working with children using art as a stimulus to inspire visual literacy and creative writing activities. It was during this time that <mask> conceived and produced The Shape Game (Doubleday, 2003). On 9 June 2009 he was appointed the sixth Children's Laureate (2009–2011), selected by a panel that former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion chaired. <mask>'s books are translated into 26 languages and his illustrations have been exhibited in many countries including; The United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, France, Korea, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, and Taiwan. He currently lives in Canterbury, England. <mask> was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to literature. Works

As writer and illustrator
 Through the Magic Mirror (Hamish Hamilton, 1976)
 A Walk in the Park (Hamilton, 1977)
 Bear Hunt (Hamilton, 1979)
 Look What I've Got!(Walker, 2011, )
 One Gorilla, A Counting Book (Walker, 2012)
 What If...? (Doubleday, 2013)
 Willy's Stories (Walker, 2014)
 Frida and Bear (Walker, 2015)
 Willy and the Cloud (Walker, 2016)
 Hide and Seek (Doubleday, 2017, )

As illustrator
 Hansel and Gretel by Brothers Grimm (MacRae, 1981)
 The Visitors Who Came to Stay by Annalena McAfee (Hamilton, 1984) – winner of the 1985 German youth literature prize for picture books in its German-language translation retaining <mask>'s illustrations
 Knock, knock! Who's there? by Sally Grindley (Hamilton, 1985), picture book
 Kirsty Knows Best by Annalena McAfee (MacRae, 1987), picture book
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (MacRae, 1988) – an edition of the 1865 classic, highly commended for the Greenaway and winner of the Emil
 Trail of Stones by Gwen Strauss (MacRae, 1990), picture book
 The Night Shimmy by Gwen Strauss (MacRae, 1991), picture book
 The Topiary Garden by Janni Howker (Hamilton, 1993), short stories published 1991
 <mask>'s King Kong (MacRae, 1994) – from the 1932 novelised story of King Kong
  The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), novella
 <mask>, Playing the Shape Game by <mask> (Doubleday, 2011), biography

See also

Notes

References

Further reading
 D. Martin, "<mask>", in Douglas Martin, The Telling Line: Essays On Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (Julia MacRae Books, 1989), pp. 279–90. Jane Doonan, "The object lesson: picture books of <mask>", Word & Image 2:2 (1986 April–June), pp. 159–72.Tony Bradman, "Through the magic mirror: the work of <mask>", British Book News, 1984 Autumn [Children's Books], pp. 2–5. Ellen Handler Spitz, Inside Picture Books, Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 192–94. External links
 <mask> Personal website

 <mask> index at The Guardian —includes one Gallery (14 pictures)
 <mask> at Children's Book Illustration —with extensive Gallery

1946 births
Living people
British illustrators
British children's writers
British children's book illustrators
Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration winners
Kate Greenaway Medal winners
Writers who illustrated their own writing
Writers from Sheffield
Alumni of Leeds Arts University
British Children's Laureate
20th-century British writers
21st-century British writers
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire

masks:
Anthony Edward Tudor Browne
Browne
Browne
Anthony Browne
Doris May Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Joe Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne