Developments
In 1888 William Butler Yeats published Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, a compilation of pieces by various authors of the 18th and 19th centuries. He had been assisted by Douglas Hyde, whose Beside the Fire, a collection of folklore in Irish, was published in 1890.
In London in 1892 Yeats, T. W. Rolleston, and Charles Gavan Duffy set up the Irish Literary Society. In Dublin Yeats founded the National Literary Society in the same year, with Douglas Hyde as first President. Meanwhile the more radical Arthur Griffith and William Rooney were active in the Irish Fireside Club and went on to found the Leinster Literary Society.
In 1893 Yeats published The Celtic Twilight, a collection of lore and reminiscences from the West of Ireland. The book closed with a poem of the same name. It was this book and poem that gave the Irish literary revival its nickname.
In 1893 Hyde, Eugene O'Growney and Eoin MacNeill founded the Gaelic League, with Hyde becoming its first President. It was set up to encourage the preservation Irish culture, its music, dances, and language. In that year appeared Hyde's The Love Songs of Connacht, which inspired Yeats, John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory.
Thomas A. Finlay founded the New Ireland Review, a literary magazine, in 1894, which he edited until 1911, when it was replaced by Studies. Many of the leading literary lights of the time contributed to it.
In 1897 Hyde became editor, with T. W. Rolleston and Charles Gavan Duffy, of the New Irish Library, a series of books on Irish history and literature issued by the London publisher, Fisher Unwin. Two years later Hyde published his Literary history of Ireland.
Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn published a Manifesto for Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, in which they proclaimed their intention of establishing a national theater for Ireland. The Irish Literary Theatre was founded by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Martyn in 1899, with assistance from George Moore. It proposed to give performances in Dublin of Irish plays by Irish authors. The Fay brothers formed W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company, focused on the development of Irish acting talent. The company produced works by Seumas O'Cuisin, Fred Ryan and Yeats.
Around the turn of the century Patrick S. Dinneen published editions of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, poems by Aogán Ó Rathaille and Piaras Feiritéar, and other works for the Irish Texts Society and the Gaelic League. He then went on to write the first novel in Irish, while continuing to work on his great Irish-English dictionary. On Easter Sunday 1900 Yeat's friend and muse, Maud Gonne, founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann (English: Daughters of Ireland), a revolutionary women’s society which included writers Alice Furlong, Annie Egan, Ethna Carbery and Sinéad O'Flanagan (later wife of Éamon de Valera), and the actors Máire Quinn and Sara Allgood. The Irish-language newspaper Banba was founded in 1901 with Tadhg Ó Donnchadha as editor. The following year he also became editor of the Gaelic Journal.
In 1903 Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Russell ("AE"), Edward Martyn, and Synge founded the Irish National Theatre Society with funding from Annie Horniman; Fred Ryan was secretary. The Abbey Theatre was opened by this society in Abbey Street on 27 December 1904. Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh played the name part in Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Yeats' brother Jack painted portraits of all the leading figures in the society for the foyer, while Sarah Purser designed stained glass for the same space. The new Abbey Theatre found great popular success. It staged many plays by eminent or soon-to-be eminent authors, including Yeats, Lady Gregory, Moore, Martyn, Padraic Colum, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, Thomas MacDonagh, Lord Dunsany, T. C. Murray, James Cousins and Lennox Robinson.
In 1904 John Eglinton started the journal Dana, to which Fred Ryan and Oliver St John Gogarty contributed.
In 1906 the publishing house of Maunsel and Company was founded by Stephen Gwynn, Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts to publish Irish writers. Its first publication was Rush-light by Joseph Campbell.
The Irish Review was founded in 1910 by poet and writer James Stephens, with David Houston, Thomas MacDonagh, Padraic and Mary Colum and Joseph Mary Plunkett. Plunkett published a collection of poems, The Circle and The Sword, the same year.
Read more about this topic: Irish Literary Revival
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