George William Russell

George William Russell (Lurgan, 1867 - Bournemouth, 1935) was an Irish poet, painter, editor and essayist who wrote under the pseudonym Æ. He belonged to the Irish Literary Revival, and he matters for combining verse, cooperative activism, Irish nationalism and a lasting interest in mysticism.

Born in Lurgan, he moved with his family to Dublin at the age of eleven. He studied at the Metropolitan School of Art, where he began a lifelong friendship with W. B. Yeats that was sometimes strained. He first worked as a draper's clerk and then for many years with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, a farmers' cooperative founded by Horace Plunkett. There he rose to Assistant Secretary and helped build up the credit societies and co-operative banks. His official post limited what he could say about politics, yet he never hid his nationalism. He supported the strikers during the Dublin Lockout of 1913 and sympathised with the Easter Rising, though his pacifism led him to take part mainly through writing and editing.

He edited The Irish Homestead for many years and later The Irish Statesman. His first volume of poems, Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894), placed him among the leading figures of the Revival. His verse often turns to nature and the inner life. He claimed to have visions from early youth and to be clairvoyant, and these experiences shaped both his poems and the paintings and drawings he made. He was also an active member of the Theosophical Society in Dublin.

For decades his house on Rathgar Avenue was a gathering place for writers and artists, and he is remembered for a generosity that many younger authors valued. Frank O'Connor called him the father of three generations of Irish writers. He appears as a character in Joyce's Ulysses, and his influence survives in twentieth-century Irish poetry and in Dublin's literary memory.