Coole edition
2 primary works • 3 total works
Book 2
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
Book 15
Lennox Robinson's selection from Lady Gregory's Journals was first published in 1946 as the culmination of many years' nego-tiations between the Trustees of Lady Gregory's Estate and her London publishers, Putnam & Co., but it was only a fraction of the material that Lady Gregory had expected would be published when she sent the typescripts over to London in 1931. Since the publication of that small selection (which appeared in the U.S.A. in 1947), no one saw the complete typescripts until they were purchased as part of the Lady Gregory archives by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 1964. After being cata-logued, they were made available to scholars. Now at last, Daniel Murphy's edition is available in two volumes, the first containing Books 1 to 29 and the second Books 30 to 44. The Journals contain fascinating accounts of Lady Gregory's efforts to get back the Lane Pictures for Ireland, the Troubles, her activities at the Abbey Theatre, her life at Coole and her determination to keep it for her grandson Richard, as well as recording her friendship with W. B. Yeats, one of the most important and influential in English literature: thus the Journals are important for social and political as well as for artistic reasons, and are a prime source for all students of the literature and history of Ireland. They also provide a remarkable insight into the life and work of a woman whom Bernard Shaw called 'one of the most remarkable theatrical talents of our time' and 'the greatest living Irishwoman'.
In Poets and Dreamers Lady Gregory has gathered together a number of essays and translations she had made from the Irish of Douglas Hyde, An Craoibhin Aoibhinn, 'the Sweet Little Branch', who was founder and President of the Gaelic League at the time and later to be the first President of the Republic of Ireland. Lady Gregory has also written about other poets in this volume, notably Raftery, who was the model for Yeats's Red Hanrahan, and also writes about West Irish ballads, and those by Jacobite and Boer and that beautiful poem by the expatriate Shemus Cartan, 'A Sorrowful Lament for Ireland'.Her other essays are covered by the Dreamers part of the title, 'Mountain Theology', 'Herb Healing' and 'Workhouse Dreams' among them. This edition contains a further five plays by Hyde, translated by Lady Gregory, three of which have not hitherto been published. The Ap-pendices contain a number of early versions of poems and articles and includes 'Dreams that have no moral' by W. B. Yeats. This has been added from his Celtic Twilight (1902) as an Appendix in order to give an example as to how Lady Gregory worked together with him in providing him with material for his volumes. Lady Gregory refers to the story in 'Workhouse Dreams'. The Editors have also added a quant-ity of her revisions and an essay, 'Cures by Charms', which first appeared in the Westminster Budget with two of the other essays in this volume, but which was not included in the first edition.