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  • All This Mine Alone: Lady Gregory and the Irish Literary Revival
  • Section 4: Arrested in Philadelphia
printed journal cover with illustration

The Abbey Row: Not Edited by W.B. Yeats

handwritten horoscope

Horoscope for Lady Gregory

manuscript draft of poem

"A Friend's Illness"

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“A Friend’s Illness” manuscript draft written in the end papers of Gregory’s copy of The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, vol. 1
Stratford-on-Avon, Imprinted at the Shakespeare Head Press
1908

Drained by overwork, difficulties at the Abbey, and other worries, Gregory’s health declined, leading to a nervous collapse and severe nosebleeds—often incorrectly described since as a cerebral hemorrhage— on February 3, 1909. She told Yeats a few days later, “I think I nearly slipped away.” The news shocked him to the core. In a moving letter he told her she was “a second self. The only person in the world to whom I could tell every thought.” In his journal he wrote, “She has been to me mother, friend, sister and brother. I cannot realize the world without her.” “A Friend’s Illness” is the first of several poems in which he would meditate on her singular qualities and his reliance on her.

: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

: Lady Gregory collection of papers

Items in Section 4: Arrested in Philadelphia

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  • Book cover of "The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet"

    Section 4: Arrested in Philadelphia Introduction

  • printed journal cover with illustration

    The Abbey Row: Not Edited by W.B. Yeats

  • manuscript draft of poem

    "A Friend's Illness"

  • handwritten horoscope

    Horoscope for Lady Gregory

  • handwritten letter by Lady Gregory

    Letter to W.B. Yeats

  • pale pink cover with title, author, and publigher printed with plain black type

    The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet

  • George Bernard Shaw inside a black car in front of the building at Coole Park

    George Bernard Shaw at Coole Park

  • Book cover of "The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet"

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