Lady Gregory

She continued to write prose during the period of her marriage, including short stories she published under the name "Angus Grey."[13] During the winter of 1883, whilst her husband was in Ceylon, she worked on a series of memoirs of her childhood home, with a view to publishing them under the title An Emigrant's Notebook,^[14] but this plan was abandoned. "An Emigrant's Note Book" remained unpublished until it appeared in Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (2018).^[15] She wrote a series of pamphlets in 1887 called Over the River, in which she appealed for funds for the parish of St. Stephens in Southwark, south London.^[16] She also wrote a number of short stories in the years 1890 and 1891, although these also never appeared in print. A number of unpublished poems from this period have also survived. When Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory went into mourning and returned to Coole Park; there she edited her husband's autobiography, which she published in 1894.^[17] She was to write later, "If I had not married I should not have learned the quick enrichment of sentences that one gets in conversation; had I not been widowed I should not have found the detachment of mind, the leisure for observation necessary to give insight into character, to express and interpret it. Loneliness made me rich—'full', as Bacon says."^[18]

Cultural nationalism

A trip to

Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a visit to his home, Tullira Castle, in 1896 that she first met W. B. Yeats.^[24] Discussions between the three of them, over the following year or so, led to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899.^[25] Lady Gregory undertook fundraising, and the first programme consisted of Martyn's The Heather Field and Yeats's The Countess Cathleen.

The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901,

On 11 May 1904, the society formally accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As Horniman was not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent required were paid for by her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory.^[28] One of her own plays, Spreading the News, was performed on the opening night, 27 December 1904.^[29] At the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in January 1907, a significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder of the performances to be acted out in dumbshow.^[30] Lady Gregory did not think as highly of the play as Yeats did, but she defended Synge as a matter of principle. Her view of the affair is summed up in a letter to Yeats where she wrote of the riots: "It is the old battle, between those who use a toothbrush and those who don't."^[31]

Later career

In July 1925, The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory was broadcast by the nascent British Broadcasting Company's 2LO (London) station.^[32][33]

She remained an active director of the theatre until ill-health led to her retirement in 1928. During this time she wrote more than 19 plays, mainly for production at the Abbey.^[19] Many of these were written in an attempted transliteration of the Hiberno-English dialect spoken around Coole Park that became widely known as Kiltartanese, from the nearby village of Kiltartan. Her plays had been among the most successful at the Abbey in the earlier years,^[34] but their popularity declined. Indeed, the Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty once wrote "the perpetual presentation of her plays nearly ruined the Abbey".^[35] In addition to her plays, she wrote a two-volume study of the folklore of her native area called Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland in 1920. She also played the lead role in three performances of Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1919.

During her time on the board of the Abbey, Coole Park remained her home; she spent her time in Dublin staying in a number of hotels. For example, at the time of the 1911 national census, she was staying in a hotel at 16 South Frederick Street.^[36] In these she dined frugally, often on food she had brought with her from home. She frequently used her hotel rooms to interview would-be Abbey dramatists and to entertain the company after opening nights of new plays. She spent many of her days working on her translations in the National Library of Ireland. She gained a reputation as being a somewhat conservative figure.^[37] For example, when Denis Johnston submitted to the Abbey his first play, Shadowdance, it was rejected by Lady Gregory and returned to the author with "The Old Lady says No" written on the title page.^[38] Johnston decided to rename the play, and The Old Lady Says 'No!' was eventually staged by the Gate Theatre in 1928.

Retirement and death

When she retired from the Abbey board, Lady Gregory returned to live in Galway, although she continued to visit Dublin regularly. The house and

In 1932, Lady Gregory, whom Shaw once described as "the greatest living Irishwoman",

Her plays fell out of favour after her death, and are now rarely performed.[42] 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.^[43]

Her

In 2019, the New York Public Library announced a major exhibition on Gregory and her work, "All This Mine Alone: Lady Gregory and the Irish Literary Revival," to be co-curated by James Pethica and Colm Toíbín. The exhibition opened in March 2020 but closed do to the global pandemic; an online version remains available. In conjunction with the exhibition, The Irish Repertory Theatre of New York and the Druid Theatre of Galway offered a major revival of some of Gregory's plays. In November 2020 it was announced that Trinity College Dublin, whose library's forty busts previously represented men only was commissioning four additional busts of women and that one of them would be a bust of Lady Gregory.^[47] In 2023 Gregory was the subject of a a two-part RTÉ documentary starring Miriam Margolyes and Senator Lynn Ruane, and featuring commentary from Roy Foster, James Pethica, Judith Hill, Melissa Sihra, and other Gregory scholars.

Published works, collaborations and translations

See also

• Cathleen Ní Houlihan

References