Gregory, Lady Augusta

Related Category: English Literature, 20th cent. to the Present: Biographies

(Isabella Augusta Persse), 1859–1932, Irish dramatist. Though she did not begin her writing career until middle-age, Lady Gregory soon became a vital force in the Irish drama. She was a founder and the manager-director of the Abbey Theatre, for which she wrote many of her most successful pieces, including Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), written with friend and colleague W. B. Yeats, Spreading the News (1904), The Gaol Gate (1906), The Rising of the Moon (1907), and The Workhouse Ward (1908). Her short plays, mainly comedies, are rich in portrayals of Irish peasantry. Among her other works are Our Irish Theater (1913) and several long plays dealing with Irish history.

See her journals (ed. by L. Robinson, 1946); biography by C. Toibin (2003); studies by H. Adams (1973) and M. L. Kohfeldt (1985).