All This Mine Alone

Augusta Gregory (1852–1932) and William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

Notebook with Cathleen ni Houlihan manuscript draft

Fall 1901

“All this mine alone. A.G.” declares Gregory’s annotation halfway through this draft of Cathleen ni Houlihan. In the play, an old woman enters a cottage on the eve of the Irish rebellion of 1798. We gradually realize she is an embodiment of Ireland and is bidding Michael, the oldest son of the house, to fight for her cause. After they leave, a neighbor says he has just seen Michael not with an old woman but with a young girl, “and she had the walk of a queen.” The play was published over Yeats’s name alone and became one of his best-known works for the theater. It spurred their years of close collaboration on plays, but Gregory long resented his appropriation and insufficient acknowledgment of her contribution.