The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of W. B. Yeats left him in his fiftieth year, at a cross-roads in his life. The subsequent quarter-century surveyed in The Arch-Poet takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing his greatest poems, from the stark simplicity of 'The Fisherman' and 'The Wild Swans at Coole', through the magnificent complexities of the sequences reflecting the Troubles and Civil War and the Byzantium poems, to the radical compression of his last work - some of it literally written on his deathbed. The drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution and the new Irish state founded in 1922. Yeats's many political roles and his controversial involvement in a right-wing movement during the early 1930s are covered more closely than ever before, and his complex and passionate relationship with the developing history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout this book, the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs and polemic as well as poetry) is explored through his private and public life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators, and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats constantly re-created himself and his work, believing that art was 'not the chief end of life but an accident in one's search for reality': a search which brought him again and again back to his governing preoccupations: sex and death. He also held that 'all knowledge is biography', a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest lives of modern times.

此书深受英国文坛推崇，《卫报》的书评作者认为它将是我们这个时代最经典的一部文学传记之一，既是学术作品，又有充满想象力的创造，精妙的组织使其可读性很强。《独立报》评论此书：轻而易举保持了一流传记的极高水准。叶芝"爱尔兰诗人"的身份几乎贯穿了半个世纪，他写下了大量杰出的诗篇，此时的内战与动乱也使其心绪不佳，将自己束缚于性和超自然体验的双股绳索下——其中包括与可爱的，"精神却不大稳定"的Margot Ruddock 夫人存在的非正常关系。此外，本书也是《经济学人》中年度推荐好书中的一本。