Title
The Abbey Theatre Series of Plays
Coverage
Dublin
Publisher
Maunsel & Co.
Date
(1905-1911)
Description
W. B. Yeats wanted this paper-wrapped series of plays to be available to audiences prior to and during the productions. This series bears Elinor Monsell’s famous Abbey Theatre symbol, Queen Maeve and her Irish wolfhound. Displayed here are three of the fifteen volumes in the first important series.
a) Spreading the News: The Rising of the Moon: The Poorhouse (with Douglas Hyde). Being Vol. IX of the Abbey Theatre Series. Lady Gregory. Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1906. Inscribed: “To John Quinn, that wonder of the western world, from the writer, A. Gregory, 1906.”
Quinn, a lawyer and collector of literary manuscripts and modern art, was the foremost American patron of the Irish Literary Revival. A friend and host of both Yeats and Lady Gregory, he and Lady Gregory even had a brief affair in 1910. In 1920, he defended James Joyce’s Ulysses and its American publishers Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap on charges of obscenity, a case they lost. Ulysses would not be published in the United States until a new trial in 1933.
b) The Playboy of the Western World. J. M. Synge.Vol. X, 1907.
c) When the Dawn Is Come. Thomas MacDonagh. Vol XI, 1908.
a) Spreading the News: The Rising of the Moon: The Poorhouse (with Douglas Hyde). Being Vol. IX of the Abbey Theatre Series. Lady Gregory. Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1906. Inscribed: “To John Quinn, that wonder of the western world, from the writer, A. Gregory, 1906.”
Quinn, a lawyer and collector of literary manuscripts and modern art, was the foremost American patron of the Irish Literary Revival. A friend and host of both Yeats and Lady Gregory, he and Lady Gregory even had a brief affair in 1910. In 1920, he defended James Joyce’s Ulysses and its American publishers Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap on charges of obscenity, a case they lost. Ulysses would not be published in the United States until a new trial in 1933.
b) The Playboy of the Western World. J. M. Synge.Vol. X, 1907.
c) When the Dawn Is Come. Thomas MacDonagh. Vol XI, 1908.
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