Search Results for 'Autumn Gathering'

Lelia Doolan, the renowned film producer, lecturer, theatre director, and a woman whose energy fizzles if confronted by a cause she feels needs a champion, will launch the 17th Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering on Friday September 23.

The highly successful Lady Gregory Autumn Gatherings continue in Coole Park, Gort, Co Galway, running from Friday to Sunday, 23 to 25 September, and will this year recognise the remarkable influence of Lady Augusta Gregory on the development of Irish theatre and literature.

I find it hard to imagine that not everyone liked Lady Augusta Gregory of Coole Park. What few readers there are of the Diary, I am told, sigh with exasperation when they see her name appear. They know that I will eulogise endlessly about how her home at Coole became a ‘workshop’ for writers, poets and artists during those exciting days at the beginning of the last century, leading to such remarkable talents as WB Yeats, John M Synge, Sean O’Casey and others to stand as giants on the European literary stage. She was the co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, its director and organiser during its shaky early days. She was a substantial playwright, journal keeper, folklorist, scholar, etc, etc, and, in my opinion, this amazing Galway woman never got the recognition she deserved.

What would have happened to James Joyce had he come to the relative comforts of Coole, instead of opting for hardship and exile and the life of a wandering artist in Europe?

In Roy Foster’s impressive biography of WB Yeats* he tells an interesting anecdote concerning the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the Cork coast on May 7 1915. The Galway writer Violet Martin (the second half of the caustic but amusing Sommerville and Ross duo), was walking by the sea near Castletownshend, Co Cork, when she saw the Lusitania pass in ‘beautiful weather’. Half and hour later, as the ship steamed passed the Old Head of Kinsale on her way to Liverpool, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. Nearly 2,000 people perished.

Following the success of the publication Me and Nu - Childhood at Coole published in 1970,* it is sometimes forgotten that Lady Augusta Gregory had three grandchildren, and not two as is often assumed. Written by Lady Gregory’s granddaughter Anne, Me and Nu is a charming account of life at Coole, as the children watched with amusement (and disillusionment at their human foibles), many of the great figures of the Irish literary movement of the 20th century as they came and went.

How WB Yeats changed his wife’s name to George, and annoyed his lifelong friend Lady Gregory as a result, is one of the lighter topics to be explored during this year’s 15th Autumn Gathering.

One of the most unusual strategies ever used by a young wife to keep a faltering marriage together was employed by Mrs W B Yeats on their honeymoon.