Lady Augusta Gregory

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory ( 15 March 1852 - 22 May 1932) was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway, served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people." Early life and marriage: Gregory was born at Roxborough, County Galway, the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse. Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000-acre (24 km ) estate located between Gort and Loughrea, the main house of which was later burnt down during the Irish Civil War. 2] She was educated at home, and her future career was strongly influenced by the family nurse (i.e. nanny), Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker, who introduced the young Augusta to the history and legends of the local area. She married Sir William Henry Gregory, a widower with an estate at Coole Park, near Gort, on 4 March 1880 in St Matthias' Church, Dublin. Sir William, who was 35 years her elder, had just retired from his position as Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for County Galway. He was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, and the house at Coole Park housed a large library and extensive art collection, both of which Lady Gregory was eager to explore. He also had a house in London, where the couple spent a considerable amount of time, holding weekly salons frequented by many leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais and Henry James. Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881. He was killed during the First World War, while serving as a pilot, an event which inspired Yeats's poems "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory," and "Shepherd and Goatherd."..................... William Butler Yeats ( 13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeats's debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

sabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (n e Persse; 15 March 1852 - 22 May 1932) was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Cuchulain of Muirthemne Is a version of the C Chulainn legends based on previous oral and written versions as collected and translated by Lady Augusta Gregory. First published in 1902, it is one of the earliest such collections to appear in English. The book covers the lifespan of the hero, from conception to death, and draws on folklore and oral tradition in addition to the stories of the Ulster Cycle. Lady Gregory considered herself a supporter of the Irish Literary Revival, rather than a writer. She recorded in her diary that "I dreamed that I had been writing some article & that W. B. Y. said 'It's not your business to write - Your business is to make an atmosphere'". She undertook the book only after William Butler Yeats refused an offer to translate his own edition of Irish myth. In 1900, a commission on education in Ireland issued a report declaring Irish literature devoid of idealism or imagination. This report, written by Trinity College Professor Robert Atkinson and parroted by Professor John Pentland Mahaffy, infuriated the Gaelic League, its founder Douglas Hyde, and Irish nationalism, including Yeats and Gregory. Later that same year, English publisher Alfred Nutt asked Yeats to compose a collection retelling Irish myth and legend. Yeats refused, excusing himself as being too busy with his own work. 4] Lady Gregory volunteered instead, initially hoping the work might serve as a source of raw material to nationalist poets, as well as a rebuttal to critics of Irish literature like Atkinson and Mahaffy. At first, she lacked confidence in her writing abilities and expected the work to take her a lifetime. After she earned the encouragement of Yeats, the work went to press in less than two years

Lady Augusta Gregory (15 March 1852 - 22 May 1932), was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that was identified closely with British rule, her interest in the language and the legends of the local area was fostered early in her life by her nanny. After the death of her husband, her interest in the language and folklore was re-ignited. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Many of the diaries and journals she kept for most of her adult life have been published, providing a rich source of information on Irish literary history during the first three decades of the 20th century. Cuchulainn is an Irish mythical hero. His exploits are retold in a series of stories known as the "Ulster Cycle".