October 16, 1998: Volume 44, Number 6

Murphy to Speak on William B. Yeats

William M. Murphy, the Thomas Lamont Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Modern Literature at Union College and an internationally renowned Yeats scholar, will present Union's first Lamont Research Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 4:30 p.m. in Union College's F.W. Olin Center Auditorium.

The lecture is titled "The Fourfold Ambition of William Butler Yeats."

Murphy has authored five books about the Yeatses, and written numerous scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as Irish literature, Shakespeare, and Chaucer. As Anthony Bradley wrote in the Spring, 1996 Irish Literary Supplement, "Murphy writes with elan and wit."

His 1978 biography, Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, was acclaimed by reviewers. In Quest, Hugh Kenner called it "an achievement nearly as rare as its subject, the right book written by exactly the right man." In a front page review in The New York Times Book Review, Richard Ellman praised Murphy's "absorbing and authoritative narrative;" and Terrance Winch in the Washington Post Book World called it simply "a brilliant work."

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