Irish Poet William B. Yeats Wins Nobel Prize for Literature on November 14, 1923

Image courtesy of the John J. Burns Library

Irish poet William Butler Yeats was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature on November 14, 1923, in recognition of his accomplished and influential poetry, as well as his efforts with others to amplify Ireland’s literary theater while cultivating a cultural nationalism that supported political goals of independence. 

In his presentation of the prize to Yeats in Stockholm on December 15, 1923, Nobel Committee Chairman Per Hallstrom said that Yeats “has been able to follow the spirit that early appointed him the interpreter of his country, a country that had long waited for someone to bestow on it a voice. It is not too much to call such a life’s work great.” 

 The title of Yeats’ acceptance speech was The Irish Dramatist Movement, in which he gave the Swedish Academy a fascinating recap of the modern literature of Ireland, starting with Douglas Hyde’s founding of the Gaelic League, to Lady Gregory and her work with the Gaelic Revival and to the plays of John M. Synge, whom he compared to Scottish poet Robert Burns. 

Yeats also recounted the criticism of and opposition to the literary movement from the Church, the British government, Unionists and often from the Irish people themselves. 

Referring to the Irish War of Independence, Yeats ended his acceptance speech by saying, “It is too soon yet to say what will come to us from the melodrama and tragedy of the last four years, but if can pay our players and keep our theatre open, something we come. We are burdened with debt, for we have come through war and civil war and audiences grow thin when there is firing in the streets. We have, however, survived so much that I believe in our luck, and think that I have a right to say I end my lecture in the middle or even perhaps at the beginning of the story.”

Earlier in his career, Yeats had visited the United States several times and had an affinity with Boston, since his first poem was published by the Boston Pilot on August 6, 1887, when Yeats was 22 years old.  In 1911, he came to Boston with the Abbey Theatre  for its performance of Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," and he spent time lecturing on Ireland's National Theatre at Harvard and before Irish organizations.

The Boston Public Library has a collection of Yeats correspondence and writings. The  John J. Burns Library at Boston College has a Collection of Yeats Family Papers for scholars and researchers.  The Houghton Library at Harvard University has Yeats Collection that includes letters and manuscripts.