Augusta, Lady Gregory

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Augusta, Lady Gregory, in full Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, née Isabella Augusta
Persse, (born March 15, 1852, Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland—died May 22, 1932,
Coole), Irish writer and playwright who, by her translations of Irish legends, her peasant
comedies and fantasies based on folklore, and her work for the Abbey Theatre, played a
considerable part in the late 19th-century Irish literary renascence.

In 1880 she married Sir William Henry Gregory, a

neighbouring landowner who had previously served
as a member of Parliament and as governor of Ceylon
(Sri Lanka); her literary career did not begin until
after his death (1892). In 1896 she met William
zoom_in
Augusta, Lady Gregory, 1911. Butler Yeats and became his lifelong friend and
George C. Beresford —Hulton
patron. She took part in the foundation of the Irish
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Literary Theatre (1899) and became a director (1904)
of the Abbey Theatre, which owed much of its success to her skill at smoothing the
disputes among its highly individualistic Irish nationalist founders. As a playwright, she
wrote pleasant comedies based on Irish folkways and picturesque peasant speech, offsetting
the more tragic tones of the dramas of Yeats and J.M. Synge.

Lady Gregory wrote or translated nearly 40 plays. Seven Short Plays (1909), her first
dramatic works, are among her best, vivid in dialogue and characterization. The longer
comedies, The Image and Damer’s Gold, were published in 1910 and 1913 and her strange
realistic fantasies, The Golden Apple and The Dragon, in 1916 and 1920. She also arranged
and made continuous narratives out of the various versions of Irish sagas, translating them
into an Anglo-Irish peasant dialect that she labeled “Kiltartan.” These were published as
Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904).

Colin Smythe edited Seventy Years, Being the Autobiography of Lady Gregory (1975),
which consists basically of excerpts of diaries and letters with comment.

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering, Executive Editorial Director.
Citation Information
Article Title:
Augusta, Lady Gregory
Website Name:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published:
18 May 2021
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augusta-Lady-Gregory
Access Date:
July 27, 2021