Augusta Gregory – författare

Lady (Augusta) Gregory (1852-1932) was a dramatist and folklorist. Along with the poet W. B. Yeats she was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and co-founded the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Born Isabella Augusta Persse in County Galway, she belonged to the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, which was closely associated with colonial rule. She married Sir William Gregory in 1880. Her conversion to Irish cultural nationalism began after the death of her husband and was heavily influenced by her visit in 1892 to Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands, where she learnt Irish and the Hiberno-English dialect of Kiltartin. Poets and Dreamers was her first publication and contained translations of the Irish-language poet Anthony Raftery, folk-tales, and plays by the Gaelic scholar and future first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=gregau

Lady Augusta Gregory’s Irish Myths and Legends, or Gods and Fighting Men as it was first titled in 1904, is an essential collection of Irish myths, legends and folk tales gathered by Gregory from Irish oral story tellers at the close of the nineteenth century.These epic tales are divided into two parts: the first charts the coming of the mythic Tuatha De Danaan to Ireland, the lives of Manannan and Lugh, and the tragedy of the Children of Lir. The second part follows the exploits and trials of Finn Mac Cumhal, the Fianna, Oisin, and the love story of Diarmuid and Grania.This is a timeless collection of Irish myths and legends - whimsical, tragic, astounding and ever familiar - borne through the centuries, and an essential part of Ireland's literary heritage.