Joseph M. Hassett is a graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a doctorate in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College Dublin. He has written and lectured extensively on Yeats and other Irish writers. He lives and practices law in Washington, DC. He and his wife, Carol Melton, have two children, Matthew and Meredith.

"A subtle, suggestive study of inspiration, based on penetrating readings of the poems and a close exploration of the texture of the poet's biography; it weaves life, love and work together in a quintessentially Yeatsian manner, full of insight." --Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History, Hertford College, Oxford

"Hassett's elegant book manages to give a summary and compelling account of the extraordinary sequence of distinguished women that Yeats was inspired by throughout his life, tracing fully all the eccentricities of those connections. This is one of those books which leaves you marveling that the world left room for it to be written: a delight from start to finish." --Bernard O'Donoghue, Fellow in English, Wadham College, Oxford

"Joseph Hassett's W.B. Yeats and the Muses is a valuable addition to both the critical and biographical literature on Yeats. Equipped with shrewdly evaluated, often new, biographical material, his scrupulous engagement with the relevant poems provides convincing critical illuminations, original slants, and fresh ways of seeing. Since this work brings the Classical as well as the Romantic notion of the Muse to modern discourse in a responsible way, it's hard to imagine the poems being read in the future without reference to Hassett's extended insights into one of the most fruitful and provoking zones in all of Yeats's' work." --Eamon Grennan, Emeritus Professor of English, Vassar College

"A brilliant and magisterial work of scholarship...A magnificent achievement. What [Hassett] demonstrates with clarity, discretion and profound insight is that Yeats is a consummate poet of love. Through his careful analysis of how the love and sexual passion of a great artist can infuse his creative life with inspiration and power, Hassett has made a major contribution not only to Yeats studies but also to a more enlightened understanding of how ordinary human beings can live more productively engaged and fulfilled lives...Like his subject, Hassett's book is a work of great intellectual and human significance that will stand the test of time." --Professor James Flannery, Irish America

"[A] deeply informed and fascinating book...An exceptionally lucid work of criticism." --Michael Dirda, The Weekly Standard

"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." --Dublin Review of Books

"Even to the sophisticated reader of Yeats, these explorations of Yeats's personal life and the symbiosis of his Muses confirm 'a second beauty' and 'new coherence' to Yeats's poems. These insights are the result of Joseph M. Hassett's able scholarship." --Studies Irish Review