William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was born near Dublin and grew up there, in London, and in the County Sligo countryside. In Sligo, under the shadow of Ben Bulben Mountain, said by locals to be home to the fairy people known as the Sidhe (She), Yeats imbibed Irish folk tales and legends. He studied painting in Dublin but left school to pursue a literary career. His early poetry drew heavily on traditional legends and myths. As a young man, he fell deeply in love with an actress and Irish revolutionary named Maude Gonne. However, Gonne did not return his affections. His unrequited love for her led to the creation of many of his finest poems. In the late 1890s, Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory founded the Irish National Theatre, later the Abbey Theatre, and Yeats became its director. For that theater he wrote plays based on Irish themes, some of which used innovative costuming and movement derived from Japanese No drama. In 1917, he married Georgie Hyde-Lees and moved into a restored Norman tower called Thoor Ballylee. Yeats had always had a keen interest in spiritualism, and much of the symbolism of his later poetry derives from the "spirit writing" that his wife Georgie did in trancelike states. In 1922, Yeats was named a senator of the new Irish Free State (Eire). When he died in January 1939, he left behind a varied, fascinating body of work that reveals him as one of the great poets of the twentieth century.