JEFFARES, A(lexander) Norman 1920-

PERSONAL: Born August 11, 1920, in Dublin, Ireland; son of Cecil Norman (a university accountant) and Agnes (a civil servant; maiden name, Fraser) Jeffares; married Jeanne Agnes Calembert (a potter, and homeopath), July 29, 1947; children: Felicity Anne Sekine. Education: University of Dublin, B.A., 1943, Ph.D., 1946; Oriel College, Oxford, M.A., 1946, D.Phil., 1948. Religion: Church of Ireland. Hobbies and other interests: Traveling, rebuilding old houses, drawing, motoring.

ADDRESSES: Office—Craighead Cottage, Fife Ness, Crail, Fife KY10 3XN, Scotland.

CAREER: University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, lecturer in classics, 1943-45; University of Gröningen, Gröningen, Holland, lecturer in English, 1946-49; University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, lecturer in English, 1949-51; University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, Jury Professor of English Language and Literature, 1951-56; University of Leeds, Leeds, England, professor of English literature, 1957-74, head of English department, 1957-74, chairman of School of English, 1961-64; University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, professor of English studies, 1974-86, professor emeritus, 1986—. Has lectured in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, the Middle East, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the USSR, and elsewhere. Vice president, Film and Television Council of South Australia, 1951-56; Australian Humanities Research Council, secretary, 1954-57, corresponding member for Great Britain and Ireland, 1958-70; Scottish Arts Council, chairman of literature committee, 1977-80, vice chairman, 1980-84; Muckhart Community Council, vice chairman, 1979—. Member, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980-84; director, Yeats International Summer School, 1969-71, and Colin Smythe (publisher), 1979—; Academic Advisory Services, Crail, Scotland, managing director, 1970—.

MEMBER: International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature (founding chairman, 1967-68; honorary cochairman, 1970-73; honorary life president, 1973—), PEN Scotland (president, 1986-89), Scottish Book Trust (chariman, 1985-88), Australian Academy of Humanities (fellow), Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (chairman, 1966-69; honorary fellow, 1970—), Royal Society of Edinburgh, (fellow; vice president, 1989-90), Royal Society of Arts (fellow), Royal Society of Literature (fellow), Royal Commonwealth Society (fellow), National Book League Scotland (chairman, 1985-86), Athenaeum Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Honorary doctorates from University of Lille, 1977, University of Ulster, 1990, and University of Sterling, 2001; honorary fellow of Trinity College, 1978.

WRITINGS:

W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1949, reprinted, 1962, revised edition published as W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, Hutchinson (London, England), 1988.

The Poetry of W. B. Yeats, Barron's, 1961.

George Moore, Longman (London, England), 1965.

(With Walter Fitzwilliam Starkie) Homage to Yeats, 1865-1965, University of California, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1966.

A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1968, revised edition published as A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1984.

George Moore's Mind and Art, edited by Graham Owens, Oliver & Boyd (London, England), 1968, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1970.

The Circus Animals: Essays on W. B. Yeats, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1970.

W. B. Yeats, Humanities Press, 1971.

(With A. S. Knowland) A Commentary on the Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1975.

Jonathan Swift, Longman (London, England), 1976.

Brought Up in Dublin (poems), Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1987.

Brought Up to Leave (poems), Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1987.

Parameters of Irish Literature in English, Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1987.

(Co-selector) Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present, Gill & Macmillan, (Dublin, Ireland), 1994.

Images of Invention: Essays on Irish Writing, Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1996.

The Irish Literary Movement, Gill & Macmillan (Dublin, Ireland), 1998.

Contributor to journals.

EDITOR

Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent and Other Stories, Thomas Nelson (London, England), 1953.

Seven Centuries of Poetry: Chaucer to Dylan Thomas, Longmans, Green (London, England), 1955, revised edition, 1960.

Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, Thomas Nelson (London, England), 1957.

(With M. Bryn Davies) The Scientific Background, Pitman, 1958.

Poems of W. B. Yeats, Macmillan (London, England), 1962.

William Cowper, Selected Poems and Letters, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1963.

Oliver Goldsmith, A Goldsmith Selection, Macmillan (London, England), 1963.

Selected Plays of W. B. Yeats, Macmillan (London, England), 1964.

William Butler Yeats, Selected Prose, Macmillan (London, England), 1964.

William Butler Yeats, Selected Criticism, Macmillan (London, England), 1964.

(With K. G. W. Cross) In Excited Reverie: A Centenary Tribute to William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Macmillan (London, England), 1965.

Walt Whitman, Selected Poems and Prose, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1966.

William Congreve, Incognita [and] The Way of the World, Edward Arnold (London, England), 1966, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1970.

Eleven Plays of William Butler Yeats, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1967.

Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.

William Congreve, Love for Love, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.

Fair Liberty Was All His Cry: A Tercentenary Tribute to Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.

Richard Sheridan, The School for Scandal, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.

Richard Sheridan, The Rivals, Macmillan (London, England), 1967.

Jonathan Swift, Swift, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1968.

Thomas Crawford, Scott's Mind and Art, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1969, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1970.

George Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1972.

George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1973.

Restoration Comedy, four volumes, Rowman & Littlefield (London, England), 1974.

Jonathan Swift, Longman (London, England), 1976.

W. B. Yeats: The Critical Heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1977.

Yeats, Sligo, and Ireland, Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1980.

A History of Anglo-Irish Literature, Schocken (New York, NY), 1982.

A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1984.

W. B. Yeats, The Poems of William Butler Yeats: A New Selection, Macmillan (London, England), 1984.

W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, Hutchinson (London, England), 1988, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1989, revised edition, Continuum (New York), 2001.

Yeats the European, Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 1989.

Yeats's Poems, Macmillan (London, England), 1989.

W. B. Yeats, The Love Poems, Kyle Cathie (London, England), 1990.

Yeats's Vision, Arrow Books, 1990.

Yeats: Poems of Place, Tern Press, 1991.

(With Anna White) Always Your Friend: Letters between Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats, Hutchinson (London, Enagland), 1992.

(Coeditor) Joycechoyce: The Poems in Verse and Prose of James Joyce, Kyle Cathie (London, England), 1992.

(And author of introduction and notes) Jonathan Swift, The Selected Poems, Kyle Cathie (London, England), 1992.

(With Antony Kamm) Irish Childhoods, Gill & Macmillan (Dublin, Ireland), 1992.

(Coeditor) The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1993.

(Coeditor) Maud Gonne, The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1995.

(And author of introduction and notes) W. B. Yeats, The Secret Rose: Love Poems of W. B. Yeats, Roberts Rinehart (New York, NY), 1998.

(And author of introduction) Ireland's Love Poems: Wonder and a Wild Desire, Kyle Cathie (London, England), 2000.

(And author of introduction and notes) Oliver St. John Gogarty, Poems and Plays of Oliver St. John Gogarty, Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross, England), 2001.

(With Anna MacBride White and Christina Bridgewater) Iseult Gonne, Letters to W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound from Iseult Gonne, a Girl That Knew All Dante Once, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2003.

General editor of book series, including "Writers and Critics," 1960-73; "New Oxford English," 1963—; "Macmillan Histories of Literature," 1978—; and "York Classics," 1985—. Editor of magazines, including Review of English Literature, 1960-67, Ariel, 1970-72, and York Handbooks, 1984—; joint editor, Biography and Criticism, 1963-73. Literary editor, "Fountainwell Drama Texts," 1968-75; coeditor, "York Notes," 1980—.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A volume of poems; Images of Imagination, a collection of essays.

SIDELIGHTS: Although A. Norman Jeffares's scholarship ranges in interest from the works of fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer to twentieth-century literature, his principal concern is with the life and writings of Irish writer William Butler Yeats. Washington Post Book World reviewer George O'Brien called Jeffares "the dean of Anglo-Irish Yeats scholars."

Jeffares's book W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, first published in 1949, is an introductory study that chronologically examines Yeats's life and poetry. Bernard O'Donoghue in the Times Literary Supplement called it "an important part of Yeats studies over the past forty years." Drawing upon more recent scholarship and previously unpublished notebooks and letters, Jeffares rewrote his original biography in 1989. Retitled W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, the book is "neither a biography nor a critical study," explained Joseph Coates in the Chicago Tribune Books, ". . . but a chronological narrative of the continuous link between the life and the work at the point where one became the other—a biography of Yeats' creative sensibility." New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani noted that "the volume's main usefulness is as a kind of reference book [especially for] the reader interested in the genesis of individual poems."

Coates complimented Jeffares on his approach to examining the poetry. Jeffares, Coates believed, "avoids the curse of explication by converting it into an entertaining kind of name- and image-dropping that smells more of the pub than of the classroom." Other critics have found Jeffares's method less satisfying. "While such a well-dressed and urbane biography of Yeats is certainly welcome," wrote O'Brien, "this work also inevitably brings to mind a line the poet himself addressed to his verse: 'There's more enterprise / In walking naked.'" Despite his own reservations, O'Donoghue found that "the new book, like the old, is a good introduction to the life and works, to be used with Jeffares's invaluable Commentary on the poems."

In A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Jeffares presents a closer, disciplined reading of the poetry. Again including significant biographical data, Jeffares elaborates on the poems' literary allusions and parallels as well as the poet's use of mythology and symbolism. "This work of quiet and very great scholarship," a Virginia Quarterly Review critic stated, "collects between two covers in the most matter of fact way all that the Yeats poems are about." According to a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, lecturers, undergraduates and research students "will find this a useful and labour-saving book. Professor Jeffares's almost complete effacement of his own personality is typical of the objective devotion and the patient industry which his great countryman has always exacted from him."

Turning to the plays of Yeats, Jeffares provides an annotated guide to the poet's theatrical work in a companion volume to the Collected Poems titled A Commentary on the Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. He addresses the problems of the plays' obscurity and provides interpretation with glosses on difficult terms and names, summaries of various critical responses, and histories of production and publication. "It is a testimony to the success of the Commentary," Edward Engelberg concluded in his review for the Sewanee Review, "that it leaves us with a very good idea of how much remains to be done with the plays."

During Ireland's civil war, soldiers from the Irish Free State burned many of the letters between Maud Gonne, an Irish Catholic radical, and Yeats when they invaded Gonne's home. Jeffares offers a collection of the letters that survived in The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938. The lengthy friendship between Yeats and Gonne inspired some of the poet's best verse, and this fact is documented in this volume. Although only twenty-nine letters in the collection were actually written by Yeats, enough information can be derived from them to help understand Yeats's life-long obsession for Gonne. With the addition of significant editorial notes, Daniel Patrick King of World Literature Today noted, "The result is a valuable picture of two uncommon people."

The success of Images of Invention: Essays on Irish Writing comes from Jeffares's profound knowledge of Irish authors and their writings. With essays on writers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, he provides a major introduction to students of Irish literature. According to Geoffrey Heptonstall of Contemporary Review, Jeffares "has a scholar's eye for detail, a critic's perception of the subtle connection, the underlying theme."

Ireland's Love Poems: Wonder and a Wild Desire is a collection that includes writers from Jonathan Swift to Seamus Heaney. The central theme in this volume of poems selected by Jeffares is love, an expression in Irish literary tradition that there is no shortage of. According to Patricia Monaghan of Booklist, "Collections of Irish poetry don't get any better than this." Whether the poem is traditional or modern, or the writer male or female, these poems offer the reader an authoritative insight into the essence of Irish literature.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Irish Literature, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

PERIODICALS

America, October 20, 1990, Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, review of W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, p. 277.

American Scholar, autumn, 1993, John P. Sisk, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 616.

Antioch Review, spring, 1993, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 301.

Atlantic, January, 1993, Conor Cruise O'Brien, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 117.

Booklist, February 1, 2002, Patricia Monaghan, review of Ireland's Love Poems: Wonder and a Wild Desire, p. 917.

Choice, May, 1993, B. Quinn, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 1466; September, 1996, review of W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, p. 126; May, 1997, review of Images of Invention: Essays of Irish Writing, p. 1496.

Christian Science Monitor, March 15, 1990, Thomas D. D'Evelyn, review of W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, p. 13; January 19, 1993, Merle Rubin, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 13.

Commonweal, August 13, 1993, Elizabeth Shannon, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 24.

Contemporary Review, October, 1992, Geoffrey Heptonstall, review of Always Your Friend, p. 219; March, 1997, Geoffrey Heptonstall, review of Images of Invention: Essays of Irish Writing, p. 164.

Criticism, fall, 1969.

Economist, June 5, 1965; April 25, 1992, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, pp. 100, 116.

English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, February, 1997, review of W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, p. 252.

Georgia Review, fall, 1994, Patricia Meyer Spacks, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 610.

James Joyce Quarterly, spring-summer, 1995, Sebastian D. G. Knowes, review of Joycechoyce: The Poems in Verse and Prose of James Joyce, p. 777; summer-fall, 1998, David Holdeman, review of Images of Invention, p. 930.

Library Journal, November 1, 1992, Judy Mimken, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 85.

Modern Language Review, July, 1977.

New Leader, January 22, 1990, Phoebe Pettingell, review of W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, p. 15; January 25, 1993, Phoebe Pettingell, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 17.

New Yorker, February 8, 1993, George Steiner, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 109.

New York Times, January 2, 1990, Michiko Kakutani, review of W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, p. B2.

New York Times Book Review, January 10, 1993, Seamus Deane, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 13.

Poetry, April, 1968.

Publishers Weekly, October 1992, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 65.

Reference & Research Book News, September, 1996, review of W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, p. 56.

Saturday Review, December 11, 1965.

Sewanee Review, winter, 1976; summer, 1994, Ben Howard, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 84.

Southern Review, summer, 1993, Vereen Bell, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 629.

Times Educational Supplement, January 27, 1978.

Times Literary Supplement, June 24, 1965; January 2, 1968; January 8, 1971; July 26, 1974; October 10, 1975; June 29, 1984; March 10, 1989, p. 252; May 11, 1990, p. 493; April 24, 1992, Penelope Fitzgerald, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 5; September 27, 1996, Norman Vance, review of Images of Invention, p. 13; September 27, 1996, review of Ireland's Women, p. 32; February 1, 2002, Edna Longley, review of Poems and Plays of Oliver St. John Gogarty, p. 25.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), November 19, 1989, p. 5.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1969.

Washington Post Book World, February 25, 1990, p. 6.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1990, William Pratt, review of W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, p. 643; spring, 1996, Daniel Patrick King, review of The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938, p. 411.

ONLINE

Norton Poets Online,http://www.wwnorton.com/ (June 4, 2002), biography of A. Norman Jeffares.