SOURCE: Robinson, Lennox. “Lady Gregory.” In The Irish Theatre: Lectures Delivered During the Abbey Theatre Festival Held in Dublin in August 1938, edited by Lennox Robinson, pp. 55-64. London, Great Britain: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1939.

In the following essay, first delivered as a speech for the first Abbey Theatre Dramatic Festival in 1938, Robinson—who served as a manager, producer, and director at the Abbey Theatre—describes Lady Augusta Gregory's contributions to the Abbey Theatre.

To understand Lady Gregory fully it is necessary to visualise her background. She was born in a big country-house in Co. Galway in 1852, and married in 1881 Sir Richard Gregory. After her marriage her home was Coole Park, a few miles from her birthplace. Her husband was a man of cultivation and taste, and Coole Park, a large eighteenth-century house, was crowded with books and paintings and mementoes of the generations of Gregorys who had been soldiers...