Gregory, Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

(1852-1932)

   She was born Isabella Persse, the daughter a wealthy landowner of Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland. In 1880 she married a neighbor, Sir W.H. Gregory of Coole Park-former governor of Ceylon. She was widowed in 1892 and her son was killed in action as an airman in Italy 1918. She became heavily involved with W.B. Yeats in forming the Irish Literary Theatre, Dublin, which opened on 27 December 1904, and was a leading figure in the Irish Revival. Between 1903 and 1927 she wrote twentyfive plays and adapted four of Molière's, translating them into Irish country speech; she also wrote or translated nineteen other books and dozens of poems, many of which are taken from the Irish oral tradition. She wrote two plays of Irish folk (1912 and 1923). Some of her poems: "A Blessing on Patrick Sarsfield," "A Woman's Sonnets," "An Aran Maid's Wedding," "Credhe's Complaint at the Battle of the White Strand," "Forgaill's Praise of Columcille," "His Lament for O'Kelly," "The Army of the Sidhe," "The Call to Bran," "The Death of Osgar," "Yesterday Travelling Connacht."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Irish Poetry: An Interpretive Antholog y from Before Swift to Yeats and After. W.J. McCormack, ed. New York University Press, 2000. Songs from the British Drama. Edward Bliss Reed, ed. Yale University Press, 1925. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Kiltartan Poetry Book by Lady Gregory. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1919 (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gregory/poetry/poetry.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia).