Told earlier in the year that his name was under consideration by the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, Yeats had said he was certain that Thomas Mann (who won the Nobel in 1929) would be named Laureate in Literature. He wrote his close friend Augusta, Lady Gregory, that they purchased “book cases, stair carpets, a carpet for the study, plates dishes, knives & forks & something I have always longed for a sufficient reference library… As I look at the long rows of substantial backs I am conscious of growing learned minute by minute.” The next day, the Yeatses went out and began spending some of the check Yeats would receive in December. Then, according to Yeats’s sister Lily, the couple went down to the kitchen and cooked some sausages before going to bed. The 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to William Butler Yeats “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” Informed of the prize late on the night of November 14 by the editor of the Irish Times, the fifty-eight-year-old Yeats and his wife George sat up taking telephone calls and telegrams for a couple of hours.
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