Isabella Augusta Gregory

Isabella Augusta Gregory, née Persse (1852-1932), Irish playwright, who was a leader of the Irish Renaissance. She was born in Rosborough, county Galway, into an aristocratic family. After the death of her husband, Sir William Gregory, in 1892, she became involved in the effort to arouse Irish nationalism through an appreciation of Irish literature and speech. With the poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats she founded what became the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which she directed and for which she wrote many plays. Lady Gregory collaborated with Yeats on Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902) and provided him with material for other plays. She wrote several one-act plays concerning contemporary Irish peasant life, including Spreading the News (1904), The Rising of the Moon (1907), The Workhouse Ward (1908), and MacDonough's Wife (1913). Several are written in Kiltartan, the Anglo-Irish dialect of western Ireland, as are many of her sketches, stories, and retellings of old Gaelic sagas, such as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902). Lady Gregory's estate, Coole Park, inspired Yeats, and she actively helped other Irish writers, including John Millington Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey.