Gregory, Lady Augusta
Gregory, Lady Augusta (1852–1932). Though her plays and other writings fill many volumes, she is most often remembered in connection with W. B. Yeats. Her translations from the Gaelic influenced his work and in verse he celebrated Coole Park, her Co. Galway house, and the ‘powerful character’ which made her collaboration valuable. Her son, Major Robert Gregory, he elegized as embodiment of the artist as man of action. Though from the protestant ascendancy and sometimes at odds with nationalist opinion, she was committed to the Republic and Coole survived the civil war. Into her seventies she was active on the board of the Abbey theatre and her plays show a gift for comedy lacking in Yeats. Attempts to secure a Dublin home for her nephew Hugh Lane's picture collection were less successful, but her place as a moving spirit in the Irish renaissance is assured.
John Saunders
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Gregory, Lady Augusta
