GREGORY, LADY AUGUSTA

Reference code:

Papers of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852ñ1932)

Biographical History

Born Augusta Persse in Roxborough, county Galway, Lady Augusta Gregory became famous in later life as a dramatist and folklorist with special interest in the unique idiom of Irish peasantry. She married Sir William Gregory in 1880, and after his death in 1892, she moved to Coole Park, county Galway. It was here in Coole Park, that she entertained the great literary figures of the time such as William Butler Yeats, George Russell, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Se·n OíCasey. She collaborated with Yeats on collections of folklore and published widely. She also wrote approximately forty plays on the same theme, most of which were produced in the Abbey Theatre, which she was instrumental in founding.

Scope and content

Letter from Alice Hillstead MusÈk, Hradec Kr·lovÈ, Czechoslovakia, to J. Grierson, Herbert Street, Dublin (2 October 1937, 1p) concerning the purchase of a s.s. [sweepstake] ticket on her behalf. She encloses a handwritten letter of sympathy from Lady Gregory, Coole Park, written to her on the death of her husband (22 November 1924, 2pp), that she thinks might be put in a museum; and a photograph taken by her late husband of John Millington Synge at Dargle Glen (1906).

Access:

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