Alexander Norman Jeffares, who has died aged 84, was a Yeats scholar and Anglo-Irish literature academic.
During a wide-ranging career, he was a teacher, author of a number of books, particularly about WB Yeats, and editor of many anthologies on prose and poetry.
Born in Dublin, his family came from Wexford, but he was three-quarters Scots, which explained partly his decision to retire to Fife Ness in Scotland with his wife, Jeanne.
Prof Jeffares was born in 1920, spent his childhood in Milltown and was educated at TCD, where he read Latin. He lectured in English at Edinburgh University, before becoming professor of English language and literature at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
This was followed by 17 years at Leeds University as professor of English literature.
From 1974 he was professor of English studies at Stirling University in Scotland.
He also taught in the Netherlands after the war.
Prof Jeffares founded the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature and was honorary life president of the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, which he directed from 1969 to 1971.
He received an honorary DLitt degree from Lille University.
His works include WB Yeats: Man and Poet; In Excited Reverie: A Centenary Tribute to WB Yeats; Fair Liberty was All His Cry: A Centenary Tribute to Jonathan Swift; Yeats: the Critical Heritage; A Pocket History of Irish Literature; The Irish Literary Movement.
Recently he edited the Complete Poems and Plays of Oliver Gogarty, and co-edited with Anna White the Gonne-Yeats Letters.
He said: "I've done a lot of work on Yeats. I was lucky enough to have the run of his library and the help of his widow."
In 1988, four decades after his first biography of Yeats, he published a new one, which was described as a refinement, rather than a redefinition, of his views. He said then he believed that Yeats had been seriously underrated as a prose writer.
He was the editor of a number of anthologies including, in 1987, An Irish Childhood with Anthony Kamm.
The previous year he published two volumes of poetry about growing up in Ireland.
Prof Jeffares continued working on books of anecdotes, volumes of poetry and anthologies until his death.