W.B. Yeats founds the National Literary Society in Dublin, with Douglas Hyde as its first president

W.B. Yeats publishes a short play The Countess Cathleen, his first contribution to Irish poetic drama

Gladstone finally gets a Home Rule bill through the Commons, only to have it rejected in the Lords

The Gaelic League is founded to restore the use of Gaelic as Ireland's spoken language

The Irish Parliamentary Party, which split after the Parnell divorce case, reunites under the leadership of John Redmond

The play Cathleen ni Houlihan, by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, fosters Irish nationalism

Irish politician Arthur Griffith launches Sinn Fein, as an organization campaigning for a strong and independent Ireland

W.B. Yeats heads a group of writers and directors in establishing the Irish National Theatre Society

Erskine Childers has a best-seller in The Riddle of the Sands, a thriller about a planned German invasion of Britain

J.M. Synge's play Riders to the Sea has its premiere at the Molesworth Hall in Dublin

Dublin's Abbey Theatre opens as a new home for the Irish National Theatre Society

J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World provokes violent reactions at its Dublin premiere

J.M. Synge's last and unfinished play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, is performed in Dublin shortly after his death

Edward Carson tells a vast crowd in Northern Ireland that they must be ready to defend their Protestant province by force

Half a million Unionist men and women in Belfast commit themselves to civil disobedience if Home Rule government is established in Ireland

The Irish National Volunteers are formed in Dublin, in response to the Protestant equivalent in Ulster

A Home Rule Act is finally passed for Ireland, with its implementation postponed until after the war

Erskine Childers sails his own yacht from Germany to Ireland with 900 rifles and 14,000 rounds of ammunition for the Irish Volunteers

Roger Casement travels to Germany to persuade Irish prisoners of war to change sides and invade Ireland

The Irish painter Jack Yeats develops a romantic Expressionist style, with a new interest in Celtic myth

The occupation of the General Post Office in Dublin marks the beginning of the Easter Rising

The rebel leader Patrick Pearse stands under the portico of Dublin's General Post Office to announce the birth of the Irish republic

Roger Casement is arrested after returning secretly to Ireland three days before the Easter Rising

Eamon de Valera comes to prominence as one of the republican leaders in the Easter Rising

Patrick Pearse and his fellow Irish rebel James Connolly are executed by firing squad