Who was the first Irish Nobel Laureate for Literature?

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was pillar of the Irish literary establishment and in his later years served 2 terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

On 14 November 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Irish citizen to achieve such an accolade.The prize was awarded to Yeats ‘for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation’.

Somewhat surprised by the award, Yeats would later write in his autobiography: "Early in November (1923) a journalist called to show me a printed paragraph saying that the Nobel Prize would probably be conferred upon Herr Mann, the distinguished novelist, or upon myself, I did not know that the Swedish Academy had ever heard my name".

The news of the award was widely praised in Ireland with members of the lower house of the Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann) proudly announcing that it had placed Ireland on the international stage.

For many people Yeats was one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. The publication of his poetry which included “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), “Michael Robartes and the Dancer” (1921), “The Tower” (1928), “The Winding Stair and Other Poems” (1933), and “Last Poems and Plays” (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English.