This history of the Abbey discusses the plays and the personalities in their underlying historical and political context, to give due weight to the theatre's work in Irish, and to take stock of its artistic and financial development up to the end of the millennium.

But these are integrated with accounts of the Abbey's people, from Yeats, Martyn, and Lady Gregory, whose brainchild it was, to the actors, playwrights, directors, and managers who have followed - among them the Fays, Synge, O'Casey, Murray, Robinson, Shiels, Johnston, Murphy, Molloy, Friel, McGuiness, Deevy, Carr, and many others. The role of directors and policy-makers, and the struggle for financial security, subsidy, and new-style 'partnerships', is discussed as a crucial part of the theatre's continuing evolution.

Prologue 1
1. 1899-1902, 'Four Green Fields'
2. 1902-1910, 'Screeching in a Straightened Waistcoat'
3. 1911-1925, 'O Absalom, my son'
4. 1926-1951, 'The birth of a nation is no immaculate conception'
5. 1951-1966, 'I remember everything'
6. 1966-1985, 'History is personal'
7. 1985-1999, 'The dead are not the past, the dead are the future'
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index