George William Russell
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George William Russell (April 10, 1867 – July 17, 1935) who wrote under the pseudonym Æ, was an Anglo-Irish supporter of the Nationalist movement in Ireland, a critic, poet, and painter. He was also a mystical writer, and centre of a group of followers of theosophy in Dublin, for many years. He is not to be confused with George William Erskine Russell (1853 - 1919).
[edit] Biography
He was born in Lurgan, County Armagh. His family moved to Dublin when he was eleven. He started working as a draper. He worked for the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, a cooperative sponsored by Sir Horace Plunkett, for which he travelled extensively throughout Ireland as a spokesman for the society, establishing cooperative banks in the west of the country.
Russell was editor of The Irish Homestead from 1905-1923 and The Irish Statesman from September 15, 1923 – April 12, 1930. He used the pseudonym AE, or more properly, Æ. This derived from an earlier Æ'on signifying the lifelong quest of man, subsequently shortened.
He met the young James Joyce in 1902, and introduced him to other Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats, to whom he was close. He appears as a character in the "Scylla and Charybdis" episode of Joyce's Ulysses, where he dismisses Stephen's theories on Shakespeare.
[edit] Poetry
- Homeward Songs by the Way (Dublin: Whaley 1894)
- The Earth Breath and Other Poems (NY&London: John Lane 1896)
- The Nuts of Knowledge (Dublin: Dun Emer Press 1903)
- The Divine Vision and Other Poems (London: Macmillan; NY: Macmillan 1904)
- By Still Waters (Dublin: Dun Emer Press 1906)
- Deirdre (Dublin: Maunsel 1907)
- Collected Poems (London: Macmillan 1913)
- Gods of War, with Other Poems (Dub, priv. 1915)
- Imaginations and Reveries (Dub&London: Maunsel 1915)
- The Candle of Vision (London: Macmillan 1918)
- Autobiography of a Mystic (Gerrards Cross, 1975), 175pp.;
- Midsummer Eve (NY: Crosby Gaige 1928)
- Enchantment and Other Poems (NY: Fountain; London: Macmillan 1930);
- Vale and Other Poems (London: Macmillan 1931)
- Songs and Its Fountains (London: Macmillan 1932)
- The House of Titans and Other Poems (London: Macmillan 1934)
- Selected Poems (London: Macmillan 1935).
[edit] External links
- Brief biography
- Retrospectives on Russell from The Canadian Theosophist (15 August 1935)
- Chronology of Russell's life
- The Candle of Vision (1918)
- Collected Poems by Æ (1913)
- Russell at the Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
- Works by George William Russell at Project Gutenberg
- A. E. at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
