William Butler Yeats, one of the most accomplished poets of modern times, was born in Dublin in Ireland, the son of a well-known portrait painter. He grew up in County Sligo and began writing poetry at age fifteen. Achieving fame as a writer, he supported Irish independence, then served in the Irish Senate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He lived in the south of France later in life and died there in 1939, aged seventy-three. (By John Osborne)