The entire personal library of William Butler Yeats, comprising more than 2,500 volumes, has been donated to the National Library of Ireland. The collection was donated to the library by the poet's son, Michael B. Yeats, and his daughter-in-law, Gráinne.
It includes books which have been annotated in the poet's handwriting and in that of his wife, George. There are copies of Yeats's own published work, many of them showing his own revisions for subsequent editions, providing essential information for tracing the evolution of his texts.
Numerous volumes with inscriptions from contemporaries of Yeats and volumes which were used by him in selecting materials for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse are also included.
The National Library is already the world's largest repository of Yeats's papers, a collection which is one of the most significant literary archives in the English-speaking world.
It was gifted to the library by Mrs W.B. Yeats and by the poet's family in the period since his death in 1939.
The library plans to provide a separate Yeats Room, as part of its building programme, where readers will have access to the books and Yeats papers. Pending this development, and as soon as the books have been processed and catalogued, they will be made available on an interim basis to researchers at the library's manuscript reading room. Yeats himself was a regular reader at the library, almost from its opening in 1891.