A Vision

The corrected reissue of this remarkable book has been eagerly awaited. Originally issued in 1920 in a private, limited edition, and later published in 1937 with revisions and additions, A Vision has been unavailable in an English edition for a number of years. This work is Yeats's own explanation of the system of supernaturally-inspired images and metaphors which provided the framework of some of his greatest poetry.

The genesis of A Vision started four days after Yeats's marriage in 1917 when he dis-covered, to his surprise, that his wife had made an attempt at ' automatic writing'.Yeats encouraged her in this practice and studied her notebooks with mounting fascination. He began to see in this mediumistic, barely legible script the rudiments of the system for which he had longed—the answers to all his questions.

Yeats devoted the next seven years to the material received through his wife, first as these communications the ' metaphors for poetry ' that he had been promised.

The significance of A Vision for all those concerned with literature is that it provides invaluable clues to the thought behind the work of the great poet.