These diaries, covering the decade following the death of her husband, chart the course of Lady Gregory's gradual but remarkable remaking of her life. The rich account these pages give of Lady Gregory's life in the 1890s and of her deepening friendship with and patronage of Yeats radically
changes the existing image of her evolution as an Irish writer and Nationalist and of the early years of the Irish Literary Theatre. As the only day-to-day record kept by a major figure in the Irish literary movement, these diaries provide a revealing and frequently corrective counterweight to the
narratives of these times written years later by Yeats, Moore, Lady Gregory herself, and others.