X-Nico

unusual facts about Lady Gregory


Ahmed Orabi

The earliest published work of Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory – later to embrace Irish Nationalism and have an important role in the cultural life of Ireland – was Arabi and His Household (1882), a pamphlet (originally a letter to The Times newspaper) in support of Ahmed Orabi ("Arabi" being an archaic mistransliteration not uncommon in English at the time).


Colm Tóibín

He has also achieved a reputation as a literary critic: he has edited a book on Paul Durcan, The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997); The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); and has written The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 (1999), with Carmen Callil; a collection of essays, Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002); and a study on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).

Diarmuid and Grania

George Moore wrote a novel based on a translation by Lady Gregory of the Fenian tale The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne.

Hallie Flanagan

While there, she met some of the most influential figures in theatre including John Galsworthy, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Edward Gordon Craig and Lady Gregory.

Irish Literary Theatre

W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn published a "Manifesto for Irish Literary Theatre" in 1897, in which they proclaimed their intention of establishing a national theater for Ireland.

J. M. Kerrigan

There he became a stalwart, appearing in plays by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge (for whom he played the role of Shawn Keogh in The Playboy of the Western World.

Steven Fischer

His international work includes documenting the first Irish National Tour of the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway play Coole Lady, a historical play about the life of Lady Gregory by noted playwright and W. B. Yeats biographer Sam McCready.

Thoor Ballylee

A native of Carron, County Clare, Hanley founded the society in 1961 to foster interest in the literary history of the district, especially that of Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and W.B. Yeats.


see also

Cuchulain of Muirthemne

In his memoir Hail and Farewell, George Moore, formerly a comrade of Lady Gregory and Yeats in the Irish Literary Theatre, accused Lady Gregory of plagiarizing her materials for the work.

Yeats recalled Nutt’s suggestion of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur as a model for the translation and Lady Gregory wrote of the work in her diary as a guide for selecting and weaving together her disparate sources with pleasing, literary prose.

Gods and Fighting Men

First published in 1904, Lady Gregory drew upon a number of published and oral sources to create her version, including Eugene O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, the Annals of the Four Masters and the Book of Leinster.

Irish Literary Revival

The Irish Literary Theatre was founded by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Martyn in 1899, with assistance from George Moore.