Shortly before he died in 1922. John Butler Yeats wrote an angry, defensive letter to his eldest son William. W.B. Yeats had published a memoir in the Dial and his father objected to the almost parenthetical mention in one episode of an 'enraged' Yeats family. The remark unleashed in him a long-restrained irritation, prompting an impassioned defence of his daughters. 'As to Lily and Lolly,' John Yeats wrote,

LRB 18 July 1996 | PDF Download