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Life
1879-1967 [née Devenport]; b. 3 Aug., Loughrea, Co. Galway; ed. Eccles St. College and National [then Metropolitan] College of Art; dg. sub-contstable at Loughrea; ed. convent and National College of Art; m. Joseph O’Neill [supra], 29 June, 1908; held Thursday ‘At Home’ salon at their address, 3, Kenilworth Sq., Rathgar; Yeats’s consultant on A Vision and friend; contrib. Irish Times, The Bell, Dublin Magazine; her sole collection is Prometheus and Other Poems (1929); she wrote lyrics for her husband’s play The Kingdom Makers (1917) and some verse drama of her own; Bluebeard (1933) was choreographed by Ninette de Vallois among the final productions of the Abbey School of Ballet, appearing with The Drinking Horn by Arthur Duff in 1933; also wrote Cain (1945); her plays were published in magazine form only. DIL DIW OCIL
Works
Poetry, Prometheus and Other Poems (London: Jonathan Cape 1929), 124pp. Also contribs., “Three Poems’, Irish Statesman, 4 (Aug. 1, 1926), p.650; “Dead in the Wars and in Revolutions”, in The Dublin Magazine, 16 (Winter 1941), p.7; “Scene-shifter Death”, in The Dublin Magazine 19 (Spring 1944), p.40; “Valhalla”, in The Dublin Magazine 19 (Winter 1944), p.3; “Lost Legions”, in The Dublin Magazine 24 (Spring 1949), p.16. Also lyrics for Joseph [Seosamh] O’Neill, The kingdom-maker: a play in five acts (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: T. Fisher Unwin [1918]).
Plays, “Cain”, in The Dublin Magazine 13 (Spring 1938), pp.30-48 [verse]; “Out of Darkness”, in The Dublin Magazine 22 (Summer 1947), pp.20-39; “The Visiting Moon”, in The Dublin Magazine 23 (Spring 1948), pp.35-46 [verse]. Also King Lear’s Daughter [q.d.]
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Criticism
Patricia Coughlan & Tina O’Toole, eds., Irish Literature: Feminist Perspectives [IASIL Conf. 2004, Galway] (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2008).
Quotations
King Lear’s Daughter [q.d.]: ‘It was they who made pale colours / The narrowed range of his dazed eyes / And made him soothe his ears with stories told [...] / Or did he contain them?’ (Quoted in Catriona MacKernan, review of Patricia Coughlan & Tina O’Toole, eds., Irish Literature: Feminst Perspectives, in Books Ireland, Feb. 2009, p.15.) [Note: KLD not listed in COPAC.]
Notes
Mary Davenport [sic] O’Neill; [3] Kenilworth Sq., Yeats’s consultant when writing A Vision; her Thursday ‘At Home’s attended by Yeats, “AE”, et al. (See Robert Greacen, Brief Encouters, pp.28-29.)
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