The Women behind the Abbey
Dolly Robinson and Irish Theatrical Networks
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8865114 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nora Moroney (School of English, Trinity College Dublin & Marsh’s Library, Dublin, Ireland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1037-1054 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0013838x.2023.2256609 |
| OpenAlex | W4388836352 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
This paper revives the work and reputation of artist Dolly Robinson, focusing on her as a lynchpin of many cultural circles in Dublin from the 1920s to the 1940s. Drawing on the archive of Robinson papers, it assesses her contribution to the development of a distinctive Irish theatrical tradition and reveals a woman with strong connections to the Irish artistic milieu of her day. Her work and collaborations reflect some of the many interactions between visual art and literary culture. Her exhibition of paintings and various Abbey set pieces are examined alongside the productions and adaptations of these years, and how they underpinned the output of some of the major literary figures of the era. Specifically, Robinson’s literary influence on her husband and contemporaries is considered in the context of female collaboration, an enabling but overlooked presence that mirrored the role of many women in a newly independent Ireland.KEYWORDS: Theatre historynetworksgossipIrish dramawomen artists Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Reynolds, “Theatrical Ireland”, 64.2 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 29 October 1946. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/633.3 Yeats Occult Papers, National Library of Ireland. NLI MS 36,261/15.4 Letter from E.B. Gibbs and Geraldine Cummins to Dolly Robinson, no date. Lennox Robinson Papers, Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.5 Sword, Ghostwriting Modernism, 41.6 Letter from Lennox Robinson to A.M.D. Hughes, 25 August 1949. Lennox Robinson Papers, Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.7 Letter from St John Ervine to Dolly Robinson, June 1917. Lennox Robinson Papers, Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.8 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson [1930], Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/623.9 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, [1946]. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/633.10 Letter from Lennox Robinson to Harry Clarke, January 1930. National Library of Ireland. MS 48,422/22.11 See for example Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts, 294.12 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson [1930], Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/623.13 Saddlemyer, Becoming George, 442.14 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 6 September 1947. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/642.15 Patten, “Introduction”, 1.16 Ibid.17 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 26 November 1946. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/638.18 Letter from Michéal Mac Liammoir to Dolly Robinson, 9 January 1961. Lennox Robinson Papers, Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House. NL Box 28, LR/54.19 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Josephine McNeill, 9 October 1944. Papers of Josephine McNeill, University College Dublin Archives. P234/186.20 Vadillo, “New Woman Poets and the Culture of the Salon at the Fin de Siècle”, 24.21 Boylan, All Cultivated People, 16.22 Clarke and Ferrar, The Dublin Drama League, 16.23 In one letter to McNeill she remarks “no matter what shortcomings my mother had, the very best of her was in her music, an ungrudging passion”. Letter from Dolly Robinson to Josephine McNeill, 18 June 1953. Papers of Josephine McNeill, University College Dublin Archives. P234/193.24 Constance Powell-Anderson, “Through Patricia’s Eyes”, Model Housekeeping [no date]. Newspaper clipping in Lennox Robinson correspondence, Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 10662/9.25 Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts, 216. Maddox attributes her information about the alleged affair to “a long interview with Dolly Robinson”.26 As quoted in Saddlemyer, “Designing Ladies”, 189.27 Vanek, Scene Change, 2128 McCormack, “Through a Glass Brightly”.29 Abbey Theatre Minute Book 1932–1936, NUI Galway Digital Archive: https://digital.library.nuigalway.ie/islandora/object/nuigalway%3A24f03ae7-f355-43b4-8691-ed1f91e9f27430 Gregory, Journals, Volume 2, 346.31 As quoted in van der Ziel, “Shakespeare in Purgatory”, 54.32 McCormack, “Flashes of Modernity”, 32.33 Ibid., 125–6.34 McCormack, “Modern Art in the 1920s”.35 “Emperor Jones: Production by the Dublin Drama League”, The Irish Times, 17 January 1927, 4.36 Saddlemyer, “Designing Ladies”, 182.37 Leeney, “Women and Irish Theatre before 1960”, 277.38 Levitas, “The Theatre of Modernity”.39 Craig, Towards a New Theatre, 3.40 Letter from Lennox Robinson to Aylmer Maude, 14 May 1924. Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.41 Reynolds, “Design and Direction to 1960”, 211.42 Transcript of letter from W.B. Yeats to Dolly Robinson, 11 November 1929. Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.43 Saddlemyer, Becoming George, 362.44 Ibid, 375, 442.45 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, no date [1929]. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/625.46 Letter from George Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy, 30 December 1926. http://www.macgreevy.org/actions.text.BrowseText.do?browse=collection&value=MacGreevy-GeorgeYeats47 McMullan and McTighe, “Samuel Beckett and Irish Scenography”, 144.48 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 16 November 1947. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/659. As an aside she details a long article by Frank O’Connor, “much he knows how to own a theatre”.49 McCormack, “Flashes of Modernity”, 31. McCormack has mapped the influence of German expressionist films and Kenneth MacGowan and Robert Edmond Jones’s 1922 book Continental Stagecraft, for example, in much of Robinson’s Abbey work.50 Marian Park Baldwin, “Wife of Irish Playwright Designs Settings, Costumes For His Plays”, The Pittsburgh Press [1931], 22. Newspaper clipping in Benjamin Iveagh Library, Farmleigh House.51 Irish Press, 29 September 1938, p. 7; other press clippings [undated]. Lennox Robinson correspondence, Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 10662/9.52 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, October 1947. Trinity College Library, Manuscripts Department. TCD MS 9686-9/631.53 Diary of Sir Horace Plunkett, 4 September 1931. National Library of Ireland, MS 42,222/51.54 Ibid., 8 September 1931.55 Letter from Thomas MacGreevy to George Yeats, 11 December 1931. http://www.macgreevy.org/actions.text.BrowseText.do?browse=collection&value=MacGreevy-GeorgeYeats56 Ibid.57 Spacks, Gossip, 11–13.58 Brownstein, Becoming a Heroine, 7.59 Schantz, Gossip, Letters, Phones, 7.60 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 8 December 1947. Trinity College Library, Manuscripts Department. TCD MS 9686-9/665.61 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 5 October 1947. Trinity College Library, Manuscripts Department. TCD MS 9686-9/648.62 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Lennox Robinson, 1946. Trinity College Library Dublin. TCD MS 9686-9/628.63 Letter from George Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy, 29 January 1927. http://www.macgreevy.org/actions.text.BrowseText.do?browse=collection&value=MacGreevy-GeorgeYeats64 Schantz, Gossip, Letters, Phones, 4.65 Letter from George Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy, 28 September 1926. http://www.macgreevy.org/actions.text.BrowseText.do?browse=collection&value=MacGreevy-GeorgeYeats66 Spacks, Gossip, 26.67 Saddlemyer, Becoming George, 374. Wilde, “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, 43.68 Stanley, “The Epistolary Gift, the Editorial Third-Party, Counter-Epistolaria”, 135.69 Mitchell and Ní Bheacháin, “Scholar-diplomats, Protodiplomacy and the Communication of History”, 204.70 Letter from Dolly Robinson to Josephine McNeill, 14 November 1949. Papers of Josephine McNeill, University College Dublin Archives. P234/189.71 Schantz, Gossip, Letters, Phones, 3
Art · Art history · Genealogy · Irish · Linguistics · Irish and British Studies · Theater, Performance, and Music History · Theatre and Performance Studies · History · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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