Poets

George William Russell who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was an Irish nationalist, writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter. He was also a mystical writer, and a the personage of a group of devotees of theosophy in Dublin for many years.

Organizer

Russell was born in Lurgan, County Armagh. His family relocated to Dublin when he was eleven years old. He was educated at Rathmines School and the Metropolitan School of Art, where he began a lifelong friendship with William Butler Yeats. He started working as a draper’s clerk, then worked many years for the Irish Agricultural Organization Society (IAOS), an agricultural co-operative society initiated by Horace Plunkett during 1894. During 1897 Plunkett needed an able organiser and W. B. Yeats suggested Russell, who became Assistant Secretary of the IAOS.

Politician

He was an able lieutenant and travelled extensively throughout Ireland as a spokesman for the society, mainly responsible for developing the credit societies and establishing co-operative banks in the south and west of the country the numbers of which increased to 234 by 1910. The pair made a good team, with each gaining much from the association with the other. As an officer of the IAOS he could not express political opinions freely, but he made no secret of the fact hat he considered himself a Nationalist. During the 1913 Dublin Lock-out he wro..