orig. George William Russell born April 10, 1867, Lurgan, County Armagh, Ire. died July 17, 1935, Bournemouth, Hampshire, Eng. Irish poet and mystic. A leading figure in the Irish Literary Renaissance, he published many books of verse, including Homeward (1894). Though initially considered by many to be the equal of William Butler Yeats, he did not develop as a poet, and many critics found him facile, vague, and monotonous. His pseudonym arose from a proofreader's query about an earlier pseudonym, on