The first three of the four chapters in Graham Hough's book were the Lord Northcliffe Lectures in Literature given at University College London in February 1983. The audience was general and the lectures were pitched accordingly. Yet all Yeatsian specialists will profit from this book and the 'radical simplification' of Yeats's occult philosophy which it so lucidly achieves. Professor Hough takes Yeats's beliefs seriously, but is neither a dévot nor sceptic. He demonstrates the 'ancient lineage' of the claims of the modern occultist fraternities, suggesting an analogy between the world of late Antiquity in which these beliefs first crystallised into recognisable forms and the period between 1890 and 1939 in which they underwent a revival. Against this background, enriched by the contributions of modern scholars from Denis Saurat to Frances Yates and Gershom Scholem, there emerge the first outlines of Yeats's spiritual biography. As Professor Hough rightly remarks, this remains to be written. Should it ever be completed, this short book will be among its most important harbingers.

LRB 18 October 1984 | PDF Download