Mary Colum Mary Colum Mary Colum (née Maguire, June 14, 1884 – October 22, 1957) was an Irish literary critic and author, who also co-founded a literary journal. Mary Gunning Maguire was born in Collooney, County Sligo, daughter of Charles Maguire and Catherine Gunning. Her mother died in 1895, leaving her to be reared by her grandmother Catherine in Ballisodare, County Sligo. She attended boarding school in St. Louis' Convent, Monaghan. Educated at Royal University, Trinity she was founder of the Twilight Literary Society which led her to meet W. B. Yeats. She regularly attended the Abbey Theatre and was a frequent
Theatre of the United Kingdom London led to a late Victorian and Edwardian theatre building boom in the West End. At the end of the century, Edwardian musical comedy came to dominate the musical stage. Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and J. M. Synge (1871–1909) were influential in British drama. Shaw's career as a playwright began in the last decade of the nineteenth century, while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth century. Synge's most famous play, "The Playboy of the Western World", "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in Dublin in 1907. George Bernard Shaw turned the