Background
Gregory was born on March 15, 1852 at Roxborough, County Galway, to the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse.
(A re-telling of the Irish saga. When first published, Gre...)
A re-telling of the Irish saga. When first published, Gregory's version affected not only Yeats, but every important writer of the period. George Russell (AE) wrote: ""I never expect to read a more beautiful book...Your story of Deirdre is extraordinarily lovely, indeed the whole book...made my heart beat with a half painful pleasure...You have acted the fairy godmother to me and to many Irish people by bringing the good gift our hearts desired.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0900675268/?tag=2022091-20
(This material collected over a period of more than twenty...)
This material collected over a period of more than twenty years proved to be a valuable source not only for Gregory's own plays but also for Yeats' work. A classic, it presents many aspects of the supernatural seers, healers, charms, banshees, forths, the evil eye and contains a treasure trove of Irish folk-beliefs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0901072362/?tag=2022091-20
Gregory was born on March 15, 1852 at Roxborough, County Galway, to the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse.
She studied at home.
Augusta's literary career did not begin until after her husband's death (1892). In 1896 she met William Butler Yeats and became his lifelong friend and patron.
She took part in the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre (1899) and became a director (1904) of the Abbey Theatre, which owed much of its success to her skill at smoothing the disputes among its highly individualistic Irish nationalist founders. As a playwright, she wrote pleasant comedies based on Irish folkways and picturesque peasant speech, offsetting the more tragic tones of the dramas of Yeats and J. M. Synge.
Lady Gregory wrote or translated nearly 40 plays. Seven Short Plays (1909), her first dramatic works, are among her best, vivid in dialogue and characterization. The longer comedies, The Image and Damer’s Gold, were published in 1910 and 1913 and her strange realistic fantasies, The Golden Apple and The Dragon, in 1916 and 1920. She also arranged and made continuous narratives out of the various versions of Irish sagas, translating them into an Anglo-Irish peasant dialect that she labeled “Kiltartan. ” These were published as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904).
Colin Smythe edited Seventy Years, Being the Autobiography of Lady Gregory (1975), which consists basically of excerpts of diaries and letters with comment.
(This material collected over a period of more than twenty...)
(A re-telling of the Irish saga. When first published, Gre...)