Annie Horniman Annie Horniman Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH (3 October 1860 – 6 August 1937) was an English theatre patron and manager. She established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encouraged the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what became known as the Manchester School of dramatists. Annie Horniman was born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, in 1860, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah née Elmslie. Her father
George Bernard Shaw ten years before achieving comparable success in Britain. Among many American writers professing a direct debt to Shaw, Eugene O'Neill became an admirer at the age of seventeen, after reading "The Quintessence of Ibsenism". Other Shaw-influenced American playwrights mentioned by Dukore are Elmer Rice, for whom Shaw "opened doors, turned on lights, and expanded horizons"; William Saroyan, who empathised with Shaw as "the embattled individualist against the philistines"; and S. N. Behrman, who was inspired to write for the theatre after attending a performance of "Caesar and Cleopatra": "I thought it would be agreeable to write plays like that". Assessing