Abbey Rebels of 1916

About this book

Today, the Abbey Theatre is world famous as the principal venue of the Gaelic revival. Through powerful dramas like Cathleen ni Houlihan, the national theatre established by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory played a leading role in the politicisation of an entire generation of Irish revolutionaries. While the lives and efforts of the Abbey's founders have been thoroughly documented, studied and even romanticised in the decades since independence, comparatively little is known about the men and women who actually formed the revolutionary lifeblood of the institution: those whose radical politics drove them to fight in the Rising. What led them to become rebels in the first place? Why was Irish theatre to separatist politics in the years before 1916, and how did drama shape the Easter Rising? And what happened to these rebels after the revolution? Drawing on a huge range of previously unpublished material, Lost Revolution explores the experiences, hopes and dreams of those seven Abbey rebels to provide a compelling and fresh account of a - perhaps the - seminal moment of Ireland's twentieth century. Invigorating and provocative, this is the story of how, in the years following the Easter Rising, the radical ideals that inspired those days of insurrection were gradually supplanted by a conservative vision of the nation Ireland could become.