John Sherman is the only work of realistic fiction Yeats ever completed. The novelette contains many biographical elements and is of interest for its treatment of Yeats's recurring themes. It examines the debate between nationality and cosmopolitan and looks at the conflict between the self and the Anti-self. Dhoya depicts a liaison between a mortal and a fairy, a motif that recurs in Yeats's poetry and other works. The texts are supplemented by an introduction and detailed explanatory notes by the editor, Richard Finneran.

The Yeats Reader is the first single volume to encompass the full range of William Butler Yeats's talents. It presents over a hundred and fifty of Yeats's best-known poems, plus eight plays, a sampling of his prose tales, and excerpts from his published autobiographical and critical writings. In addition, an appendix offers six early texts of poems that Yeats later revised. Also included are selections from the memoirs left unpublished at his death and complete introductions written for the unpublished Scribner Edition of his collected works. The Yeats Reader also includes detailed notes and a chronology of the life.