The Irish Literary Society was founded in London in 1892 by William Butler Yeats, T. W. Rolleston, and Charles Gavan Duffy.
Stopford Brooke gave the inaugural lecture to the society, on 'The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue' (Bloomsbury House, 11 March 1893).
Limerick man Michael MacDonagh, author and Parliamentary correspondent for the Times, was an active member and editor of the Society's quarterly Gazette.
It featured poetry by Rolleston, Hyde, Katharine Tynan, Lionel Johnson, AE and several others, with notes and an introduction by himself.
[2] Arthur Conan Doyle, of Irish descent, and with a keen interest in Ireland, chaired the Irish Literary Society's dinner on 13 February 1897.