Isabella Augusta Gregory

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Isabella Augusta Gregory 1913

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (born March 5, 1852 in Roxborough near Loughrea , † May 22, 1932 in Coole Park ; maiden name Isabella Augusta Persse ) was an Irish playwright and folklorist . Together with William Butler Yeats and others, she founded the Irish Literary Theater and the Abbey Theater and wrote a number of short stories. She also wrote books on stories from Irish mythology . Lady Gregory actually belonged to a class closely associated with British rule in Ireland, but her cultural ties to Irish history and culture and to Irish nationalism are symbolic of the political change in Ireland during her lifetime. Gregory was the aunt of the Irish art collector and founder of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, Sir Hugh Lane .

Lady Gregory continues to be seen as the organizer and driving force of the Irish Literary Revival , a movement that promoted traditional Irish literature. Her country estate, Coole Park (County Galway , near the town of Gort ) was an important meeting place for Irish poets and writers. Lady Gregory's motto in life comes from Aristotle and was “To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people.” (Think like a wise man, but express yourself like a common man ).

Early life and marriage

Isabella Augusta was the youngest daughter of a family of Anglo-Irish gentry . Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to Standish O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore . Her father, Dudley Persse, was a direct descendant of Dudley Persse (1625–1699), a 17th century Anglican clergyman. Through her sister Adelaide, she was Sir Hugh Lane's aunt . The Roxborough property covered 15 square miles but was burned down during the Irish Civil War . She received private home tuition and was heavily influenced by the family's nanny - a native (Catholic) Irish woman who introduced her to Irish history and myth. This early contact with Irish literature and poetry influenced her all the more as the house had no library and her mother, a strict Protestant , had forbidden her to read stories or novels until she was 18.

On March 4, 1880 , Isabella Augusta married the widower Sir William Henry Gregory , the owner of Coole Park, in a Protestant church in Dublin . As the wife of a knight , she received the courtesy title of Lady Gregory . Sir William Gregory, who was 35 years her senior, had just resigned as Governor of Ceylon and was a member of Parliament several times. He was well educated, had many literary and artistic interests, and there was a large library in his house, as well as a variety of pictures and works of art. He owned a house in London and the couple spent much of their free time holding weekly meetings with leading writers and artists, including a. with Robert Browning , Alfred Tennyson , John Everett Millais, and Henry James . Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881 and died as a pilot during the First World War - a stroke of fate that inspired WB Yeats to write his poems "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" and "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory".

Early works

The Gregorys traveled a lot, including Ceylon, India , Spain , Italy and Egypt . In Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt , during which she wrote a series of love poems ( A Woman's Sonnets ). Blunt later published these poems under his name. Lady Gregory's earliest work under her own name was Arabi and His Household (1882), a pamphlet (originally a letter to The Times newspaper ) about Ahmed Urabi Pasha , the leader of an Egyptian nationalist revolt against the Khedive regime . In 1893 she published A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin - an anti-nationalist pamphlet against William Gladstone's promised 2nd Home Rule Act. Lady Gregory also volunteered in the St. Stephen's Ward in Southwark, London, writing "Over the River" (1887) about the work there.

During their marriage, Lady Gregory wrote more literary works. In 1883/1884 she worked on a series about the memories of her childhood with the aim of publishing them under the title "An Emigrant's Notebook", which however never happened. In 1890 and 1891 she wrote a number of short stories that were also never printed. A number of unpublished poems from this period have also been preserved.

When Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory retired to Coole Park, where she completed her husband's autobiography and published it in 1894. Later she wrote about this phase in her life: 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.

Cultural nationalism

A trip to the Gaeltacht area in Inisheer , one of the Aran Islands , in 1893 rekindled her interest in the Irish language and folklore. She organized a class for the Irish language at a school near her and began collecting fairy tales and myths from the Coole Park area. This activity resulted in the publication of a series of Irish stories, e.g. B. A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), The Kiltartan History Book (1909), and The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910). She also wrote a collection of Kiltartan (English language with Gaelic syntax - a dialect mainly spoken in the Coole Park area, named after the town of Kiltartan ) versions of Irish myths such as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904). WB Yeats wrote the preface for the first of the two books, and in this “ I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time. “( I think this book is the best of Ireland of my time ) - a phrase parodied by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses .

Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive feedback on her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory turned her attention to a new project. She decided to edit parts of the correspondence from Sir William Gregory's grandfather for a publication - the work "Mr Gregory's Letter-Box 1813-30" appeared in 1898. The necessary historical research into Irish history was an important reason for her switch from moderate unionism her early works (e.g. the pamphlet on the Home Rule) to direct and open support for Irish nationalism - she later called this a distrust and an aversion to England .

Foundation of the Abbey Theater

Poster of the Abbey Theater from December 27, 1904 to January 3, 1905 .

Playwright Edward Martyn was a neighbor of Lady Gregory and it was at his home in Tullira that she first met WB Yeats. The regular talks and discussions on literary subjects between the three and other literary figures at Dunguaire Castle and in Doorus House led to the establishment of the Irish Literary Theater in 1899. Lady Gregory took on the task of raising enough money for this theater. The first pieces to be performed there were Martyn's The Heather Field and Yeats' The Countess Cathleen . During this time she also worked on Yeats' early plays, particularly the dialogues of peasant characters. The Irish Literary Theater only existed for two years until 1901 when the project ran out of funds.

In 1904 Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge , George William Russell , Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman , William Fay and Frank Fay formed the Irish National Theater Society . The Society's first performance took place at Molesworth Hall in Dublin. When the Hibernian Theater of Varieties on Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building on Marlborough Street became vacant, Horniman and W. Fay agreed to buy them and adapt them to the needs of the Society . In these buildings (the Abbey Theater ) the opening took place with "Spreading the News" on December 27, 1904.

Later career

Lady Gregory remained a director of the theater until 1928 when she resigned from this post due to health problems. During this time she wrote more than 40 plays, which are seldom performed nowadays and were only partially successful at that time. Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty once wrote: " The constant staging of her plays nearly ruined the Abbey " (theater). In addition to the plays, Lady Gregory wrote a two-part treatise on the folklore of her native region, entitled "Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland" (1920). In 1919 she starred in three performances by Cathleen Ni Houlihan .

During her time at the Abbey Theater, Coole Park remained her actual home. Whenever she stayed in Dublin, she always stayed in a variety of hotels, where she interviewed actors and held parties after premieres. Lady Gregory spent most of her days in Dublin doing various translation work in the Irish National Library.

Lady Gregory was considered very conservative - for example, they wrote when Denis Johnston his play "Shadow Dance" at the Abbey Theater submitted, "The Old Lady Says No" ( The old lady says "No" ) on the title page of the manuscript and refused . Johnson decided to rename his play and ultimately it premiered in 1928 at the Gate Theater as "The Old Lady Says No" .

Withdrawal and death

In 1928 Lady Gregory, already 76 years old, decided to retire from work at the Abbey Theater due to health problems and returned to Coole Park, but continued to visit Dublin regularly. Although the house and estate had been sold to the Irish Forestry Commission in 1927 , Lady Gregory had lifelong residency there. Prior to her time at the Abbey Theater, Coole Park was an important focal point for Irish literature as part of the Irish Literary Revival , and upon her return she began to revive that tradition. The initials of literary greats such as Synge, Yeats, George Moore , Sean O'Casey , George Bernard Shaw , Katharine Tynan and Violet Martin, still visible in the bark of the so-called Autograph Tree, date from this time .

Yeats wrote five poems about Coole Park and the surrounding area: " The Wild Swans at Coole ", "I walked among the seven woods of Coole", "In the Seven Woods", "Coole Park, 1929" and "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931 ”. The woman Shaw once described as “the great living Irishwoman” died in 1932 at the age of 80 in her house of breast cancer . Lady Gregory is buried in New Cemetery in Bohermore (County Galway).

All objects from the Coole Park house were auctioned three months after her death and the house itself was demolished in 1941, completely in ruins. Lady Gregory's plays were rarely performed after her death. However, "The Rising of the Moon" was filmed for the cinema by John Ford in 1957 and was produced as a 30-minute television play for the BBC as early as 1937: one of the very first television games in television history. Lady Gregory kept diaries for much of her life, many of which were published afterwards. These diaries are a rich source of information on Irish literary history during the first three decades of the 20th century.

Works

A selection of their plays

  • Twenty Five (1903)
  • Spreading the News (1904)
  • Kincora: A Play in Three Acts (1905)
  • The White Cockade: A Comedy in Three Acts (1905)
  • Hyacinth Halvey (1906)
  • The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1906)
  • The Canavans (1906)
  • The Rising of the Moon (1907)
  • Dervorgilla (1907)
  • The Workhouse Ward (1908)
  • The Rogueries of Scapin (1908)
  • The Miser (1909)
  • Seven Short Plays (1909)
  • The Image: A Play in Three Acts (1910)
  • The Deliverer (1911)
  • Damer's Gold (1912)
  • Irish Folk History Plays (First Series 1912, Second Series 1912)
  • McDonough's Wife (1913)
  • The Image and Other Plays (1922)
  • The Dragon: A Play in Three Acts (1920)
  • The Would-Be Gentleman (1923)
  • To Old Woman Remembers (1923)
  • The Story Brought by Brigit: A Passion Play in Three Acts (1924)
  • Sancha's Master (1927)
  • Dave (1927)

Prose and translations

  • Arabi and His Household (1882)
  • Over the River (1887)
  • A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (1893)
  • Ed., Sir William Gregory, KCMG: An Autobiography (1894)
  • Ed., Mr Gregory's Letter-Box 1813-30 (1898)
  • Ed., Ideals in Ireland: A Collection of Essays written by AE and Others (1901)
  • Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory (1902)
  • Ulster (1902)
  • Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (1903)
  • Gods and Fighting Men (1904)
  • A Book of Saints and Wonders, put down here by Lady Gregory, according to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of Ireland (1906)
  • The Kiltartan History Book (1909)
  • A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906)
  • Our Irish Theater: A Chapter of Autobiography (1913)
  • Kiltartan Poetry Book, Translations from the Irish (1919)
  • Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920)
  • Hugh Lane's Life and Achievement, with some account of the Dublin Galleries (1921)
  • Case for the Return of Sir Hugh Lane's Pictures to Dublin (1926)
  • Seventy Years (1974).

Magazines

  • Lennox Robinson, ed., Lady Gregory's Journals 1916-30 (1946)
  • Daniel Murphy, Eds., Lady Gregory's Journals Vol. 1 (1978); Lady Gregory's Journals, Vol. II (1987)
  • James Pethica, eds., Lady Gregory's Diaries 1892-1902 (1995),

Sources (all in English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gregory, Isabella Augusta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Persse, Isabella Augusta (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish playwright and folklorist
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Roxborough at Loughrea , County Galway
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1932
Place of death Cool Park , County Galway