This collection brings together all of Yeats's published prose writings on the subject, and for the first time these essays, introductions and sketches are presented chronologically, enabling the reader to perceive how Yeats's analysis develops, embracing ideas and visions of increasing psychological and philosophical complexity. ‘Joyce sought to create a humane conscience for his race; Yeats, romantically, summoned the “shaping spirit of imagination” ’ – Robert Welch ‘Yeats stood for enchantment . . . He was the real original rationalist who said the fairies stand to reason. He staggered the materialists by attacking their abstract materialism with a completely concrete mysticism’ – G. K. Chesterton