Lily and Lolly Yeats, to give them the names they were commonly known by, were rather an ill matched couple, yet for much of their lives they lived and worked in tandem. Growing up in genteel cum bohemian poverty in London, as the children of a gifted but indigent portrait painter, they imbibed much of William Morris's arts and crafts ethos and when they moved to Dublin they turned this to advantage in the enterprises for which they are remembered, Dun Emer Industries and the Cuala Press. They seem, in fact, to have supported their.
unworldly father for years, until in relative old age he paid a visit to America and liked it so much that he stayed there. until his death. W.B. Yeats emerges as a rather masterful brother, even an interfering one, while Jack quietly led his own life and managed his own affairs with unobtrusive skill. The sisters were contrasting personalities - Lily quiet, tactful, level headed, rather conventional, her father's favourite, while Lolly was restless, garrulous, touchy, and plainly difficult to live with. Both, however were gifted craftswomen who also possessed some organising skills an unlike their father knew how to cope with money matters. Neither married, though it appears that both would have liked to, in spite of their proto feminist lifestyles. This book has occasional oddities, such as the description of Hugh Lane as "the art critic and collector" (he was a highly successful art dealer), but it is sensitive and readable and does not presume too much.