Florence Farr: Letters to W. B. Yeats, 1912–17

Abstract

Only the full publication of W. B. Yeats’s letters written to Florence Beatrice Farr Emery during the years she spent in Ceylon as headmistress and manager/treasurer of Ramanathan College will permit a contextual reading of Farr’s own letters to the poet.¹ However, other extant sources further expand and adjust impressions of this “transitional” woman, as Farr referred to like individualists in an article written for The New Age.² In her several-sided persona as actress (in what might be called experimental theatre), theatre-manager, poetry-performer, occasional journalist, largely unsuccessful novelist,³ and most serious inquirer into occult thought,⁴ Farr was a constant influence on Yeats’s aesthetic, especially through their shared interest in folklore, and their determined and penetrated questioning of the “soul’s journey”.