Abstract

This lecture examines W.B. Yeats’s not inconsiderable body of writing for the newspapers which ranges from literary journalism to letters to the editor. Attention will focus on the tensions between his clear commitment to journalistic practice and his own avowed hostility to ‘the Ireland of the newspapers’. As well as providing Yeats with the means of publicising his literary endeavours and pleading Ireland’s cause, journalism was also crucial to Yeats’s development as a poet.

Eddie Holt

Eddie Holt is a lecturer in the School of Communications at Dublin City University. He has been, until January 2007, a critic and columnist for the Irish Independent and the Irish Times for more than 18 years. His research interests include media law and media ethics, as well as the journalism of W.B. Yeats. He held a teaching fellowship at Boston University in 1991.