W. B. Yeats imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory ... & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed." The collective survived for about two years but was not successful. Working with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William and Frank Fay, Yeats's unpaid yet independently wealthy secretary Annie Horniman, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr, the group established the Irish National Theatre Society. Along with Synge, they acquired property in Dublin and on 27 December 1904 opened the Abbey
Mary Devenport O'Neill Colum, W. B. Yeats, Richard Irvine Best, Frank O'Connor, Francis Stuart and Iseult Gonne. She became particularly close to Yeats, who she confided in. Yeats' recorded their weekly consultations in his diary while O'Neill was writing "A vision" (1925). In his "Oxford anthology of English verse" from 1936, he included one of O'Neill's poems. In 1917, she contributed lyrics to her husband's play "The kingdom maker". She published her only book in 1929, "Prometheus and other poems". After this she occasionally contributed primarily modernist plays and poetry to "The Dublin Magazine", "The Irish Times" and "The Bell". O'Neill collaborated with