GREGORY, Vere R.T. The House of Gregory. With a foreword by Thomas Ulick Sadleir (AUTHOR’S OWN COPY)

With illustrations and folding map. Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1943. pp. xv, 210, (+ errata slip). Quarter linen on papered boards, title in black on spine. Signed by the author on front free endpaper with his bookplate on front pastedown. With neat stamp of Webb Booksellers. Spotting to fore-edge. A very good copy in frayed dust jacket with partial loss to top of spine.

This family came to Ireland during the Cromwellian period. They first came to prominence in the defence of Derry during the siege of that city in 1689. After the siege some members of the family settled in County Kerry where they remained until 1774. The small town of Castlegregory, however, is not named after them but after one Gregory de Hora. The Kerry branch next migrated to County Galway where their principal seat was at Coole, inseparably linked with the name of Lady Augusta Gregory the well-known playwright who was prominent in the Irish Literary Revival.

This remarkable work by Vere Gregory, for many years an officer in the old Royal Irish Constabulary, while originally intended as a history of the Gregory family in Ireland and abroad, deals with many episodes of great interest in the political and social life of Ireland ... and more particularly with the stirring events connected with the last phase of British rule in Ireland.

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