Irish Literary Society
The Irish Literary Society was founded in London in 1892 by William Butler Yeats, T. W. Rolleston and Charles Gavan Duffy. Evelyn Gleeson became secretary. Stopford Brooke gave the inaugural lecture to the society, on "The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue" (Bloomsbury House, 11 March 1893).[1]
The Society developed a proposal for a New Irish Library, a series of books to honor Irish culture, with Rolleston and Douglas Hyde as editors.
A Book of Irish Verse, designed to publicise the new societies, was published in 1895, edited by Yeats and dedicated "To the Members of the National Literary Society of Dublin and the Irish Literary Society of London." It featured poetry by Rolleston, Hyde, Katherine Tynan, Lionel Johnson, AE and several others, with notes and an introduction by himself.[2]
Notable members
- D. P. Moran
- Ethel Rolt Wheeler (committee member)
- William Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne (vice-president)
- David James O'Donoghue
- C. R. Cooke-Taylor (honorary secretary)
- Stephen Gwynn (secretary)
- Michael MacDonagh (1862-1946)
- Peter Berresford Ellis
- Charles Russell, first Baron Russell of Killowen (vice-president)
- Richard Barry O'Brien
- John O'Connor Power
- Alfred Perceval Graves (president)
- Eleanor Hull (president)
- Helen Waddell (vice-president}