Gregory, Augusta. (1852 - 1932).

- a dramatist and folklorist, author of a number of short plays and books retelling stories from Irish mythology

- a cultural nationalist: the main organiser and driving force of the ‘Irish Literary Revival’

- made her house at Coole Park a meeting place for the leading Revival figures, including William Butler Yeats

- co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre (1899 - 1901) and the Irish National Theatre (1904) which became the Abbey Theatre

- contributed especially to the renaissance of Irish drama: one of the Abbey’s most prolific playwrights, a director, and stage manager

- wrote in an attempted transliteration of the Hiberno-English dialect spoken around Coole Park = ‘Kiltartanese’, from the nearby village Kiltartan

Gods and Fighting Men (1904):

- a collection of Kiltartanese versions of Irish myths

A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), The Kiltartan History Book (1909), and The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910):

- collections of tales from the area around her Coole Park home

Spreading the News (1904), The Rising of the Moon (1906), and The Gaol Gate (1906):

- one-act plays about Irish peasantry

The White Cockade (1905):

- an Irish folk-history play

- a two-volume study of the folklore of her native area

Quote

"Well, there’s no one at all, they do be saying, but is deserving of some punishment from the very minute of his birth."

From Shanwalla (1915).

(Picture: Wikimedia Commons).

Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.

Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.

Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.

Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.