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
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