George William Russell

George William Russell (10 April 1867 - 17 July 1935) who wrote under the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was an Irish poet, editor, critic, and painter. He was a nationalist and a mystic, and the centre of a group of followers of theosophy in Dublin for many years.

George William Russell (Æ). From Irish Plays and Playwrights, by Cornelius Weygand, 1913. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Æ
Born	George William Russell April 10 1867(1867-Template:MONTHNUMBER-10) Lurgan, Armagh, Ireland
Died	July 17 1935(1935-Template:MONTHNUMBER-17) (aged 68) Bournemouth, England
Occupation	Author, poet, editor, critic, painter
Nationality	Irish
Citizenship	British subject
Education	Rvd. Edward Power's school, 3 Harrington Street, Dublin
Alma mater	Metropolitan School of Art

Life

Russell was born in Lurgan, co. Armagh. His family moved to Dublin when he was 11. He was educated at Rathmines School and the Metropolitan School of Art, where he began a lifelong friendship with William Butler Yeats. He started working as a draper’s clerk, then worked many years for the Irish Agricultural Organization Society (IAOS), an agricultural co-operative movement founded by Horace Plunkett in 1894. The two came together in 1897 when the co-operative movement was 8 years old. Plunkett needed an able organiser and Yeats suggested Russell, who became Assistant Secretary of the IAOS.

He was an able lieutenant and travelled extensively throughout Ireland as a spokesman for the society, mainly responsible for developing the credit societies and establishing co-operative banks in the south and west of the country whose numbers rose to 234 by 1910. Plunkett and Russell made a good team, with each gaining much from the association with the other.

As an officer of the IAOS Russell could not express political opinions freely, but he made no secret of the fact hat he considered himself a Nationalist. During the 1913 Dublin Lock-out he wrote an open letter to the Irish Times criticizing the attitude of the employers, then spoke on it in England and helped bring the crisis to an end. He was an independent delegate to the 1917-18 Irish Convention in which he opposed John Redmond's compromise on Home Rule.

Russell was editor from 1905-1923 of The Irish Homestead, the journal of the IAOS, and infused it with the vitality that made it famous half the world over. His gifts as a writer and publicist gained him a wide influence in the cause of agricultural co-operation. He was also editor of the The Irish Statesman from 15 September 1923 until 12 April 1930. With the demise of this paper he was for the first time in his life out of a job, and concerns were raised that he could find himself in a state of poverty, as he had never earned very much money from his paintings or books. Unbeknownst to him meetings were held and collections organized and later that year at Plunkett House he was presented by Father T. Finlay with a cheque for £800. This enabled him to visit the United States the following year, where he was very well received all over the country and his books sold in large numbers.

He used the pseudonym "AE", or more properly, "Æ". This derived from an earlier Æ'on signifying the lifelong quest of man, subsequently shortened.

His first book of poems, Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894), established him in what was known as the Irish Literary Revival, where he met the young James Joyce in 1902 and introduced him to other Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats. His collected poems appeared in 1913, with a second edition in 1926.

Russell placque on Plunkett House, Dublin. Photo by Osioni. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

His house at 17 Rathgar Avenue in Dublin became a meeting-place at the time for everyone interested in the economic and artistic future of Ireland. His interests were wide-ranging; he became a theosophist and wrote extensively on politics and economics, while continuing to paint and write poetry. Æ claimed to be a clairvoyant, able to view various kinds of spiritual beings, which he illustrated in paintings and drawings. The keynote of his work may be found in a motto from the Bhagavad Gita prefixed to one of his earlier poems:I am Beauty itself among beautiful things.

He moved to England after his wife’s death in 1932, and died in Bournemouth in 1935. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.

Writing

As a poet he ranks among the mystics, in the sense that his verse is dominated by a spiritual conception of the universe. Of the two great poets brought to light by the Irish literary revival, W.B. Yeats and “Æ,” it might be said of Yeats that he coined for the world the treasure recovered by the renewed access to Gaelic sources into what was virtually a new language in poetry, and of “Æ” that he brought into Irish literature the ancient spiritual thought of the world. His gifts as a poet are reinforced by the vision of an artist, and though in verse he attained his highest expression, his paintings convey a vision of nature as intimate and delicate as in his verse.

Recognition

2 of his poems, "By the Margin of the Great Deep" and "The Great Breath", were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

He appears as a character in the "Scylla and Charybdis" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, where he dismisses Stephen Dedalus's theories on Shakespeare.

Publications

Poetry

• Homeward: Songs by the Way. Dublin: Whaley 1894; London: John Lane, 1901.
• The Earth Breath, and other poems. London & New York: John Lane, 1897.
• The Nuts of Knowledge: Lyrical poems old and new. Dundrum, Ireland: Dun Emer Press, 1903.
• The Divine Vision, and other poems. London & New York: Macmillan, 1904.
• By Still Waters: Lyrical poems old and new. Dundrum, Ireland: Dun Emer Press, 1906.
• Collected Poems. London: Macmillan, 1913; 2nd edition, 1926; New York: John Lane, 1916.
• Gods of War, with other poems. Dublin: privately printed by Sackville Press, 1915.
• Voices of the Stones. London: Macmillan, 1925.
• Midsummer Eve. New York: Crosby Gaige, 1928.
• Dark Weeping. London: Faber & Faber, 1929.
• Enchantment, and other poems. New York: Fountain Press; London: Macmillan, 1930.
• Vale, and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1931.
• Verses for Friends. Dublin: privately printed, 1932.
• The House of Titans, and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1934.
• Selected Poems. London & New York: Macmillan, 1935.

Plays

• Deirdre: A legend in three acts. Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts, 1922.

Novels

• The Interpreters. London: Macmillan, 1922.
• The Avatars: A futurist fantasy. London: Macmillan, 1933.

Non-fiction

• William Ewart Gladstone. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1891; New York: Harper, 1891.
  • London: J.M. Dent / New York: E.P. Dutton, 1912.
• The Future of Ireland, and The awakening of the fires. Dublin: Irish Theosophist Press, 1897.
• The Renewal of Youth. London: Orpheus Press, [1900?]
• The Literary Imagination. Dublin: Talbot Press / London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910.
• The Hero in Man. Ashdale, Hale, Cheshire, UK: D.N. Dunlop, 1909; London: Orpheus Press, 1910.
• The Building Up of a Rural Civilisation. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers, & Walker,1910.
• One Look Back. London: W. Gardner, Darton, 1912.
• Co-operation and Nationality: A guide for rural reformers from this to the next generation. Dublin: Maunsel, 1912.
• Saint Alban the Martyr, Holborn: A history of fifty years. London: George Allen, 1913.
• The Dublin Strike. Dublin: Irish Worker Press, 1913; London: Christian Commonwealth, 1913.
• Imaginations and Reveries. Dublin & London: Maunsel, 1915.
• The National Being: Some thoughts on an Irish polity. Dublin: Maunsel, 1916.
• Arthur Stanton: A memoir. London & New York: Longmans, Green, 1917.
• Basil Wilberforce: A memoir. London: John Murray, 1917.
• Thoughts for a Convention: Memorandum on the state of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsel, 1917.
• The Candle of Vision: The autobriography of a mystic. London: Macmillan, 1918.
  • Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing, 1965; San Rafael, CA: Coracle, 2007.
• The Economics of Ireland: And the policy of the British government. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1920.
• Selections from the Contributions to the 'Irish Homestead'. Gerrards Cross, UK: C. Smythe, 1978; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978.
• The Descent of the Gods: Comprising the mystical writings of G.W. Russell, 'A.E.' (edited by Raghavan Iyer & Nandini Iyer). Gerrards Cross, UK: Colin Smythe, 1988.
• AE in the 'Irish Theosophist', 1892-1897. Project Gutenberg, 2004.
• Writings on Literature and Art (edited by Peter Kuch). Gerrards Cross, UK: Colin Smythe, 2011.

Collected editions

• Collected Edition of the Writings of G.W. Russell (edited by Henry Summerfield). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978-.

Letters

• Some Passages from the Letters of A.E. to W.B. Yeats. Dublin: Cuala Press, 1936.
• AE's Letters to Mínanlábáin. New York: Macmillan, 1937.
• Letters from AE (edited by Alan Denson & Monk Gibbon). London, New York, & Toronto: Abelard-Schuman, 1961.
• Some Unpublished Letters from AE to James Stephens. Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland: Cuala Press, 1979.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

"Star Teachers", by George William Russell, read by The Wordman

See also

• List of Irish poets

References

• Allan, Nicholas: George Russell (AE) and the New Ireland 1905-30, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003. 

External links

Poems

• George William Russell (AE) in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "By the Margin of the Great Deep", "The Great Breath"
• 2 poems by AE: "A Summer Night," "Winter"
• Russellin the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "Star Teachers," "Desire," "The City," "Krishna," "Unity," "Reconcitiliation"
• Russell in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "Self-Discipline," "Krishna," "The Great Breath," "The Man to the Angel," "Om," "Immortality"
• A.E. (George William Russell) at Poets' Corner
• George William Russell at PoemHunter (172 poems).

Books

• Works by George William Russell at Project Gutenberg
• Works by George William Russell at Project Gutenberg Australia
• A.E. at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Russell%2c%20George%20William%2c%201867%2d1935 Russell at the Online Books Page

Audio / video

• George Russell AE poems at YouTube

About

• AE in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Brief biography
• George (William) Russell in the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
• Chronology of Russell's life
• "George William Russell (A.E)" in the Canadian Theosophist