Renowned Irish Historian to Speak Sept. 21

One of the leading historians on Ireland, Professor Roy Foster, will deliver the first Martha Emmons Irish Lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, in the Meadows Recital Hall in the McCrary Music Building on the Baylor University campus. Foster's lecture, "The Yeats Generation and the Irish Revolution," is free and open to the public.
"Not only is Foster one of the world's foremost scholars on William Butler Yeats -- who arguably is the greatest poet of the English language in the 20th century -- he also has a vast knowledge of the troubles affecting modern Ireland," said Ann Miller, professor of English, Master Teacher and coordinator of the lecture.
Born in Waterford, Ireland, and educated in Ireland and the United States, Foster is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. He served as professor of modern British history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and as a visiting fellow at Princeton University before being named the first Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford, a position he still holds. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1989, Foster currently is conducting research at the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin.
Foster has written innumerable essays, articles and books including the first volume of the critically acclaimed W.B. Yeats: A Life. In a New York Times book review of the Yeats biography -- the first authorized biography of Yeats for more than 50 years -- Thomas Flanagan said that Foster "is himself a fine writer, bearing with grace his knowledge of Irish history, and writing with wit, authority and, when appropriate, considerable eloquence."
Foster is working on the second volume of the Yeats biography.