Chapter One: "Reveries over Childhood and Youth"

The first essay in Yeats'sAutobiographiescovers the author's life through his twenties, beginning with recollections of his maternal grandfather, William Pollexfen, and continuing through the publication of Yeats's first collection of poetry in 1889,The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems.

Yeats remembers having a very unhappy childhood but is never quite able to specify what caused his unhappiness. He suspects: "my miseries were not made by others but were a part of my own mind." As he grew older, Yeats reports that he became happier.

Yeats writes of the first time he experienced hearing an inner voice as a child, which he decided later was his conscience. When he was an adult, this voice continued to come to him "at moments of crisis." He also remembers experiencing various mystical events, such as witnessing the work of "faeries" and seeing a...