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 early Fabians, mainly under the influence of Shaw, was to "alter history by rewriting it". Shaw's talent as a pamphleteer was put to immediate use in the production of the society's manifesto—after which, says Holroyd, he was never again so succinct. After the turn of the twentieth century, Shaw increasingly propagated his ideas through the medium of his plays. An early critic, writing in 1904, observed that Shaw's dramas provided "a pleasant means" of proselytising his socialism, adding that "Mr Shaw's views are to be sought especially in the prefaces to his plays". After loosening his ties with the Fabian