Search Results for 'James Pethica'

Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee! The magic of the Autumn Gathering is to bring people together from all corners of the world - to listen and learn, laugh and share, with academics and artists, locals, historians and literary figures; to meet descendants of Lady Gregory and Yeats, renew friendships and make new friends – all enjoying and celebrating the prominent role of Lady Gregory in shaping the theatrical, poetic and cultural life which thrives today.

Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee! The magic of the Autumn Gathering (to be held this year from September 30 – 1 October 1) is to bring people together from all corners of the world - to listen and learn, laugh and share, with academics and artists, locals, historians and literary figures; to meet descendants of Lady Gregory and Yeats, renew friendships and make new friends – all enjoying and celebrating the prominent role of Lady Gregory in shaping the theatrical, poetic and cultural life which thrives today.

In 1990 – exactly 100 years after Sir William Gregory granted a 99-year lease on a section of land at Kiltartan Cross on which to build a schoolhouse – the Kiltartan Gregory Cultural Society was founded. Its aim was to restore the derelict red-brick schoolhouse, the very one commissioned by Sir William Gregory, and to preserve the history of Kiltartan for future generations. The next six years were spent doing just that.

Augusta Lady Gregory, and her husband Sir William, were away in Italy in May 1888, when her former lover Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was imprisoned in Galway for participating in an anti-eviction rally at Woodford the previous October. I described last week, that within two days of her return to Galway she visited his empty cell, and remained sometime.*

The affair between Augusta Lady Gregory and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the romantic traveller, poet and a somewhat eccentric man addicted to political causes, lasted one year. It carried on almost under the eyes of her husband Sir William. He did not notice it, or if he did, he chose not to notice it.

My dear Miss Persse, I have read over many times the letter which you wrote to me a fortnight since when returning Roderick Hudson. Am I too presumptuous in thinking that there is something more in it than a mere critique on that book? I have thought over and over again on the subject and have at length determined to ask if I may write freely to you - on the most momentous question affecting a man and woman’s life…..’

Isabella Augusta Persse (later Lady Gregory), grew up in Roxborough House, Co Galway, a large rambling estate house, with magnificent gardens, commanding some 18,000 acres over which her father Dudley Persse presided with almost feudal authority. His 13 children knew their wheel-chaired bound father as The Master.*

NUI Galway hosted the Lady Gregory Yeats Gathering with a book launch for Lady Gregory’s Irish Writings 1883-1893 edited by James Pethica and a new exhibition of materials at the Special Collections Reading Room of the James Hardiman Library.

Discover more about our rich literary heritage at the Lady Gregory - Yeats Autumn Gathering, taking place at Coole Park, Kiltartan Cross, and Thoor Ballylee from September 28 to 30.

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