General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited and Introduced by James Pethica

23.4 x 15.5 cm. x, 248 pp. + 32 illus.

This sixteenth volume of the Coole Edition contains Lady Gregory’s first writings on Ireland. They include the two surviving versions of her unpublished first attempt at autobiography, 'An Emigrant's Note Book' (1883); three short stories she wrote under the pseudonym ‘Angus Grey’ —'A Philanthropist', 'A Gentleman' and 'Peeler Astore' (1890-91); and her anonymously-issued anti-Home Rule pamphlet A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (1893). Appendices contain her lyric 'Alas, a woman may not love' (1886) and the poems she sent to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt following his imprisonment in Galway in 1888 for participating in a banned tenant protest against evictions. Also included is the newly-rediscovered text of Sir William Gregory’s prescient 1881 pamphlet on the Land League.

James Pethica’s Introduction sets these works within their biographical, political and creative contexts, charting the imperatives and aspirations driving Lady Gregory’s first sustained efforts as a writer. This remarkable collection throws an entirely new light on the years of her marriage and early widowhood, revealing the foundational influence of Sir William Gregory on her political views and self-conception as a landowner, and detailing the course of her turn to Irish themes and to the life of the Galway world she had grown up in for subject matter. Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings shows her already finding core elements of her creative voice long before she met W.B. Yeats and emerged to later prominence as a folklore collector, dramatist, and cultural nationalist.

James Pethica teaches Irish Studies, Modern literature, and drama at Williams College in Massachussetts. He is preparing the authorized biography of Lady Gregory for Oxford University Press.

160pp.  20.4 cm  2018

The poems in this book represent a lifetime's struggle to recognise and come to terms both with the world around, and what is going on in the mind at moments of personal consequence. They also reflect an awareness of the work of writers from the past which, in some cases, may have influenced what appears in this book. There is no attempt to find solutions, but merely to register and search for words  which try to present, in accessible language, what the author is feeling.

Some readers' comments:

"I don't think there was a single poem which however fragile or sad its emotion, however delicate or subtle its train of thought, didn't set up a poise and dignity for itself, a sort of tender formal strength."

"I always read the poems aloud, they have an internal music which I enjoy finding."

"You have surpassed yourself, you seem to me to have reached that stage in writing to which I can only apply the word 'exquisite'. Through the years you have refined your writing to the essential, the essence."

"a poetic voice, unmistakenly yours, gentle, altogether unassertive, tentatively exploring its ground, meditatively unfolding a thought, an idea, a feeling, a physical sight or spiritual insight, always taking the reader on an inner journey which leaves him wondering what it was that has suddenly made him calm and reflective."

"And whatever subject you treat, you have an unmistakable voice, not a whit of superfluous verbiage, but precision of a kind of lean clarity. and what stands out above all is what I once called 'tentative philosophy', no dogmatising but careful reflection which takes the subject beyond its immediate appearance into realms of thought and feeling."

"I find your poetry in its content and style reminiscent of Japanese poetry. It is a culture which has paid great attention to detail and careful observation. Appreciation of nature is fundamental to many aesthetic ideals in Japan."

"You are able to convey so delicately emotion, never letting imagery cloud the work."

You have such a way of making the reader see the ordinary in an extraordinary way."

"These poems exemplify in the purest manner your particular strength of catching nature on the wing - or rather gathering, from a fleeting impression or thought, a total ensemble; of turning a natural scene into words, as few or as many as needed, no more, no less, and therefore pure poetry."

48pp.  27.00 × 19.00 cm.

In 2019, Sir Stephen Cleobury retired after half a century of greatly distinguished service to church music.A little part of that, happily, involved conducting and recording the collection of anthems by Francis and myself - and so it seemed fitting to write one more piece for him before his retirement. This piece is the Anthem for Easter Day. (as it happens, Easter remained unmarked in the collection, unless one counts the Anthem for Christ the King.)  Francis' text focused on a more personal, less overtly triumphant, quality to the Resurrection story, seen from the view of Mary Magdalen, and my setting tried to reflect that, from the somewhat sombre F minor opening of the first eight lines evoking shades of black and white to the anthem's gentle conclusion in colour and scents of that new sprint dawn.      David Goode

With a free CD which may be purchased from OxRecs

‘Questions: A Lullaby Carol’ was first performed during the Eton College Carol Service 2011 by the Chapel Choir. Director of Music: Tim Johnson. The recording was made by the choir on 15 January 2017.

The première of ‘Anthem for Easter Day’ was performed by the choir of King’s College in chapel on 12 May 2019. Director of Music: Stephen Cleobury, Organist Henry Websdale.

Issued in 2019 by OxRecs DIGITAL OXCD-148.

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R. Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited and Introduced by James Pethica

23.4 x 15.5 cm. x, 298 pp.

This first volume of Lady Gregory’s Shorter Writings covers the years 1882-1900.  Edited and introduced by James Pethica, whose authorized biography of Gregory is in preparation for Oxford University Press, it makes available all the previously uncollected work she wrote for publication during the period, including newly-discovered articles, material that was never printed, and items that appeared anonymously or pseudonymously. 

    The volume begins with her first independent publication, Arabi and His Household (1882), written in support of the deposed leader of the Egyptian Nationalist rebellion, who faced likely execution by the British.  Gregory's travel journalism and other occasional writings of the 1880s were sufficient to catch the attention of Oscar Wilde, who praised her "clever pen" and invited her to contribute to The Woman’s World, the periodical he edited.   Also included here are more than a dozen unpublished poems, often highly personal, written during her travels to India and Ceylon, along with the sequence of twelve sonnets she gave Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in 1883 as they ended their clandestine affair.  Writings from the early 1890s include one short story set in Italy, and another with a plot her friend Henry James briefly considered using as the basis for a novel. 

   Gregory’s publications from the mid-1890s offer sharp new insight into her growing interest in Irish folklore, her emergence as an Irish nationalist, and her enthusiasm for the Irish language and the Gaelic League.  Key works include a previously unpublished pamphlet on the inequities of Irish taxation, and Gregory’s first substantial folklore essays.  The last writings in the volume register her increasing centrality in the emergence of the Irish Literary Theatre, her developing friendship and collaborations with W.B.Yeats, and her growing confidence in her creative voice as she began her rise to prominence. 

James Pethica teaches Irish Studies, Modern literature, and drama at Williams College in Massachusetts. He is preparing the authorized biography of Lady Gregory for Oxford University Press.