Category:Samhain: an Occasional Review (Yeats)

Title: Samhain: an Occasional Review

Editor: William Butler Yeats

Publisher: Irish Literary Theatre

Samhain: an Occasional Review was produced by the Irish Literary Theatre from 1901 to 1908, with yearly publications in autumn. In fact, the word “Samhain” comes from the Irish word for “Hallow-Eve.”^[1] The editor, William Butler Yeats, wanted to inculcate nationalist and literary interests into the average Irishman, but the journal was mainly read by a small coterie of educated patrons who attended the Irish Literary Theatre’s performances.^[2] The journal provides performance reviews, critical essays, Irish language plays with their accompanying English translations, myth and legend tales, and updates on the status of the Irish Literary Theatre. The purpose of the playhouse and accompanying journal was to show that “Ireland [was] not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment.”^[3] In fact, most of the journal’s literary contributors only wrote drama in the hopes that Irish patrons would be inspired to produce plays on their own.^[4] Because of the radical nationalist slant of the journal, it never attracted many middle-class Irish patrons. ^[5] In a personal letter, Yeats wrote that he “hope[d] the Irish Literary Theatre [would] remain a wise disturber of the peace.”^[6] Contributors to Samhain included Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, Douglas Hyde, and J. M. Synge.

Notes

1. ↑ W. B. Yeats to Thomas Hutchison, November 1902, The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats: 1901–1904, Eds. John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard, Vol. 3, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, 250, Print.
2. ↑ Paige Reynolds, “Reading Publics, Theater Audiences, and the Little Magazines of the Abbey Theatre,” New Hibernia Review 7.4 (2003): 66, Print.
3. ↑ Lady Augusta Gregory, Our Irish Theatre, New York: Colin Smyth Gerrards Cross, 1972, 20, Print.
4. ↑ Lady Augusta Gregory, Lady Gregory's Diaries 1892–1902, Ed. James Pethica, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1996, 260, Print.
5. ↑ Reynolds 69.
6. ↑ W. B. Yeats to the Editor of the Freeman’s Journal, 14 November 1901, The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Vol. 3: 1901–1904, Eds. John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, 118, Print.

Submitted by: Bascom, Benjamin: section 1, Fall 2008