W. B. Yeats and the Muses explores how Yeats perceived the women to and about whom he wrote some of his greatest poetry in terms akin to the Greek notion that a poet is inspired and possessed by the feminine voices of the Muses. Joseph Hassett's beautifully written study follows a strong yet subtle argument through widely researched and scrupulously detailed individual chapters. The Yeats who emerges from it is clearly driven by the needs of his work as a poet; to that end all others are subservient.