Edward Larrissy studied English at Oxford, where he read for a D.Phil on the poetry of William Blake. He has taught at the universities of Warwick and Keele, and has been Professor of English Literature and Head of School at the University of Leeds, where he won funding for a major project on Leeds Poetry. As Professor of Poetry at Queen's, Belfast, he plays an active role in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, to which he is affiliated. He has published widely on poetry, including on the work of Yeats, and writes poetry himself. He has given invited papers among other places in Oxford, Cambridge, London, Strasbourg, Kyoto, South Carolina, and at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo. His published works include: Yeats the Poet: The Measures of Difference (Harvester, 1994) and Larrissy was the editor of W.B. Yeats, The Major Works (Oxford Univserity Press, 2000).