When John Millington Synge and Molly Allgood fell in love, he was thirty-five, she nineteen. Neither knew that he had Hodgkin's disease, of which he was to die in three years. Synge had already achieved recognition as a playwright--translations of two of his plays had been performed in Berlin and Prague--and he was codirector, with Yeats and Lady Gregory, of the Irish National Theatre Society. Molly had started her acting career the year before, in the newly opened Abbey Theatre, with a walk-on part in Synge's Well of the Saints. She had been promoted from crowd scenes to bit parts to lead roles in Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen. She was still only a member of the company, however, while Synge was a director, whose codirectors disapproved of fraternization. Synge and Molly also faced the disapproval of two widowed mothers. Barring an occasional holiday trip or company road tour, they could seldom be alone together, except on secret afternoon meetings for long walks in the country. Hence their hundreds of letters. Molly's letters do not survive; they apparently were destroyed when Synge died. But his letters convey her mercurial charm, her openness, her love of life, her impulsiveness, and her temper--as violent as his own. What they convey of him (when he is not reproving her or remonstrating with her, as he does in the early months of their relationship) is the love of nature, the poetic language, the bittersweet irony, the elemental quality of emotion, that we know from the plays. His concern for his craft is seen as he struggles with The Playboy. ("Parts of it are not structurally strong or good. I have been all this time trying to get over weak situations by strong writing, but now I find it won't do, and I am at my wit's end.") Synge was quite unperturbed by the violent outrage and near-riots the play provoked. ("Now we'll be talked about. We're an event in the history of the Irish stage," he wrote cheerily.) As his illness progresses, following operations in 1907 and 1908, there is great poignancy in the gradual abating of references to marriage plans and in the shift of salutation from "Dearest Changeling" to "My dearest child." After Synge's death his friends and biographers discreetly avoided mention of Molly, who under her stage name of Maire O'Neill became one of the leading actresses of the Irish theater and lived until 1952. His letters to her have not been published before, except for the few quoted in Greene and Stephens' 1959 biography. A primary source for the study of Synge and the Irish theater movement, the letters include poems inspired by Molly and extensive information about Abbey Theatre business. In addition to a biographical introduction, Ann Saddlemyer has included a map of the Wicklow and Dublin areas and numerous photographs of both Synge and Molly.

This biography chronicles the extraordinary life of twentieth-century performing artist Molly Spotted Elk. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age, performing vaudeville in New York, starring in the classic docudrama The Silent Enemy, then dancing for royalty and mingling with the literary elite in Europe. In Paris she found an audience more appreciative of authentic Native dance than in the United States. There she married a French journalist, but she was forced to leave him and flee France with her daughter during the German occupation of 1940. Using extensive diaries in conjunction with letters, interviews, and other sources, Bunny McBride reconstructs Molly’s story and sheds light on the pressure she and her peers endured in having to act out white stereotypes of the "Indian."

From Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner Tade Thompson, The Legacy of Molly Southbourne continues his chilling series. Whenever Molly Southbourne bled, a murderer was born. Deadly copies, drawn to destroy their creator, bound by a legacy of death. With the original Molly Southbourne gone, her remnants drew together, seeking safety and a chance for peace. The last Molly and her sisters built a home together, and thought they could escape the murder that marked their past. But secrets squirm in Molly Southbourne's blood—secrets born in a Soviet lab and carried back across the Iron Curtain to infiltrate the West. What remains of the Cold War spy machine wants those secrets back, and to get them they're willing to unearth the dead and destroy the fragile peace surrounding the last copies of Molly Southbourne. The Legacy of Molly Southbourne brings the story to a bloody end. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Includes the following features: sample lesson plans, pre-reading activities, biographical sketch and picture of the author, book summary, vocabulary lists and vocabulary activity ideas, quizzes, hands-on projects, cooperative learning activities, cross-curricular activities, post-reading activities, book report ideas and research ideas,

An intergenerational chronicle of the struggles and triumphs of the Carrolls, a prominent Irish Catholic family in Protestant Maryland. Charles Carroll (1737-1832) who represents the last of the three generations of patriarchs, is perhaps best known as the sole Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Tracing the Carroll's history from Ireland to Maryland, this account offers a transatlantic perspective of Anglo-American colonialism and reveals the often overlooked discrimination that Roman Catholics faced in colonial America.

Gender, Performance, and Authorship at the Abbey Theatre argues for a reconsideration of authorship at the Abbey Theatre. The actresses who performed the key roles at the Abbey contributed original ideas, language, stage directions, and revisions to the theatre's most renowned performances and texts, and this study asks that we consider the role of actresses in the development of these plays. Plays that have been historically attributed to W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge have complicated histories, and the neglect of these women's contributions over the past century reflects power dynamics that privilege male, Anglo Irish writers over the contributions of working class actresses. The study asks that readers consider the importance of past performance in the creation of written text. Yeats began his earliest plays performing with and writing for Laura Armstrong, a young woman who was a precursor to Maud Gonne in her irreverent challenge to traditional gender roles. After writing his first plays and poems for Armstrong, Yeats met Gonne and developed two Cathleen plays, The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan, for her to perform, beginning a lifetime of fruitful argument between the two writers about how Ireland should appear onstage. The book then turns to Synge's work with Molly Allgood in creating The Playboy of the Western World and Molly's contributions to Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows. A section on Yeats's Deirdre shows the contributions of Lady Gregory and the play's performers. The book ends with a reconsideration of Abbey actress Sara Allgood's performances in British and American film as she brought her earliest work in the pre-Abbey tableau movement to American audiences in the 1940s, in ways that challenged ideas of Irishness, American identity, and aging women on screen.

Alfred Wainwright, the legendary fell walker and author of the incomparable and unique Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells was also a fluent, eloquent and diligent correspondent. Writing to old friends and to the many new ones gained through his books, and to his love, and later second wife, Betty, his letters display a much warmer, more sensitive and emotional character than his gruff popular image would suggest. Hunter Davies, Wainwright's biographer, has here collected a selection of letters that range from his early years in Blackburn to his established position as Borough Treasurer in Kendal, and cover all aspects of his professional and personal life, as well as the voluminous correspondence that was a consequence of writing and publishing the Pictorial Guides. The latter vividly illuminate many aspects of that turbulent but ultimately triumphant process, while the former present a picture of a dedicated public servant whose personal life had been deeply unhappy until late in life he found unexpected but transcendent love and happiness. In turn business-like and comic, wonderfully well informed and remarkably innocent, deeply moving and yet tough-minded, the letters present a vivid and unforgettable picture of one of the great but eccentric creative geniuses of the twentieth century.

The first in a new series featuring Detective Jim Kinsella. Who murdered Molly? Was it Leopold Bloom, in the kitchen, with a teapot . . .? This finely crafted historical mystery, using several recognizable characters and the famous setting from James Joyce’s Ulysses, marks an intriguing departure for saga writer Jessica Stirling. Detective Inspector Jim Kinsella of the Dublin police force is called to the scene when the body of Molly Bloom has been found in her own kitchen where she has been beaten to death with a teapot. Although her husband, Leopold Bloom, is immediately taken into custody without a convincing alibi, Kinsella begins to have his doubts and suspicion falls upon Molly’s fellow singer and alleged lover, Hugh ‘Blazes’ Boylan. Kinsella, aided by his colleague, Inspector Tom Machin, probes the conflicting stories of Bloom and Boylan. Were the pair seen fighting outside a brothel the night of Molly’s murder? And what of the unusual scent, imported from America and found on a cotton ball beneath the Blooms’ bed, that Kinsella hopes will lead him to Leopold’s own dirty little secret? Kinsella is determined to ensure the wrong man doesn’t end up behind bars, and, in seeking the truth, stumbles upon more than he bargained for...