GREGORY, ISABELLA AUGUSTA, LADY (185 2- 1932), Irish playwright and author, was born on March 5, 1852, the youngest daughter of Dudley Persse of Roxborough, Co. Galway. In 1881 she married Sir William Gregory, a well-known Irish M.P. She produced many plays, essays, volumes of folk lore, versions of ancient sagas and romances concerning early Irish heroes, and did much to popularize the Anglo-Irish dialect of Eng lish as spoken in the west. She translated for the Abbey Theatre several of Moliere's plays into this dialect under the title of The Kiltartan Moliere (19 i o) . Her work as playwright and director of the Abbey Theatre, in association with W. B. Yeats, was ex tremely fruitful. This theatre was opened in 1904 and Lady Gregory told its story in Our Irish Theatre (1914). Sir Hugh Lane, whose life she wrote, Hugh Lane's Life and Achievement (192o), was her nephew.
Among Lady Gregory's other works are: Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) ; Gods and Fighting Men (1904) ; Seven Short Plays (Igoq) ; The Kiltartan History Book (1909) ; Irish Folk History Plays (1912) ; The Golden Apple (1916) ; The Kiltartan Poetry Book (Igig) ; The Dragon (192o) .