A. D. Hope
(1907–2000),Australian poet, born in New South Wales, and educated at the universities of Sydney and Oxford. His first collection, The Wandering Islands (1955), was followed by Poems (1960) and ...
Abbey Theatre
First permanent home of the Irish National Theatre, founded in 1904 by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and W. B. Yeats to foster native drama. Dramatic scenes came four years later with riots at the ...
Adelphi
Started in 1923 as a monthly journal under the editorship of J. M. Murry, intended as a mouthpiece for D. H. Lawrence and himself. From 1927 it became a quarterly entitled the New Adelphi. Murry's ...
Æ
(1867 –1935),pseudonym of George William Russell, poet, painter, mystic, agronomist, and editor, born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh. Moved to Dublin in 1878. At the Dublin Art School he met ...
Aidan Higgins
(1927– )novelist, born in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, and best known for the novel Langrishe, Go Down (1966), a pungent contribution to the Irish ‘big house’ genre. Set in the 1930s, in a disintegrating ...
aisling
[lit. ‘vision’; pronounced ‘ashling’] A mode of lyrical poetry in late 17th‐ and 18th‐century Irish in which the speaker encounters a spéir‐bhean (‘sky‐woman’), a beautiful maiden representing ...
A.J.M. Smith
(1902–80),Canadian editor, critic, and poet, born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Edinburgh Universities. He played an important role in what became known as ‘the Montreal Group’, the most ...
Aleister Crowley
(1875–1947),a diabolist and a bad but prolific poet who claimed to be the Beast from the Book of Revelation. He joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, a group of theosophists involved in Cabbalistic ...
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell
(1925–2009),was born at Penrhyn, Cook Islands, of a Rarotongan mother and a New Zealand father. At the age of 8 he emigrated to Dunedin where he lived for eleven ...
Allen Grossman
(1932– ),was born in Minneapolis and studied at Harvard and Brandeis universities. He was until recently the Paul E. Prosswimmer Professor of Poetry and Education at Brandeis; he now teaches at Johns ...
Alun Lewis
(1915–44),Welsh poet. His first volume of poems, Raiders' Dawn, appeared in 1942, and in 1943 a volume of stories, The Last Inspection, much of which deal with army life in England, as does his most ...
ancient Greek drama in the twentieth century
In Britain and the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, classical theatre meant almost exclusively the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In his projected renewal of ...
Anglo-Irish literature
A term used to describe Irish writing in English which helps to distinguish this tradition from English literature and literature in Gaelic. The term Anglo-Irish was applied increasingly by ...
Annie Horniman
(1860–1937),a pioneer supporter of the modern English drama, founder of the Manchester Repertory Theatre. By her generous assistance the Irish National Theatre Society was provided with a permanent ...
Aodhagán Ó Rathaille
(c.1670–1729)Born in Kerry, central figure in the aisling tradition. Ó Rathaille's impassioned, intricately musical lyrics lament the fate of the aristocratic Gaelic order of Munster in the aftermath ...
Apocalypse
The complete final destruction of the world, especially as described in the biblical book of Revelation. The word is recorded from Old English, and comes ultimately, via Old French and ecclesiastical ...
Aran Islands
(1907), a travel work in four books by J. M. Synge, written as a chapter of contemplative autobiography; it arose from W. B. Yeats's advice that Synge should live on ...
Arthur Griffith
(1872–1922)Irish nationalist leader and statesman, President of the Irish Free State (1922) government. In 1905 he founded and became President of Sinn Fein. Griffith was among those who established ...
Arthur Machen
(1863–1947),son of a Welsh clergyman, was deeply influenced by the Welsh landscape, and local folklore. He translated The Heptameron (1886) and The Memoirs of Casanova (1894) and began writing the ...
Arthur Shields
(b. Dublin, 1896; d. Santa Barbara, Calif., 27 April 1970)Actor. Brother of Barry Fitzgerald, he joined the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1916 and created parts in plays by Colum ...
