Edward Martyn was born to an illustrious family of Irish Catholic aristocrats at Masonbrook, near Loughrea, County Galway, on January 31, 1859. His father died the following year, and Edward and his brother were reared in the Martyn family home, Tulira Castle (which he subsequently inherited).

When Martyn was eight years old, the family moved to Dublin, where Martyn briefly attended Belvedere College. A further move, to London, led to his enrollment, in 1870, at Beaumont College, Windsor (like Belvedere, a prominent Jesuit school). Completing his secondary education in 1876, Martyn—in an unusual move for a Catholic—entered Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1877. There he had an undistinguished career and left, without taking his degree, in 1879, though not before falling under the influence of the aesthetic philosophy of Walter Pater.

The following year found Martyn in Paris, in the company of his cousin and subsequent nemesis, the Irish novelist George Moore. Paris gave him access to such contemporary artistic movements as Symbolism and Impressionism (Martyn had an important collection of Impressionist paintings, notably of works by Edgar Degas). Extensive travel in Europe put him in touch with other important cultural developments, such as Wagnerism and Hellenism. The latter proved an important enthusiasm on Martyn’s return to Tulira Castle, and he divided his time between Tulira and London artistic circles, in which he cultivated the acquaintance of, among others, Arthur Symons and Aubrey Beardsley.

In 1885, however, Martyn underwent a spiritual crisis of some severity, resulting in the replacement of virtually all the modern tastes that he had formed with a more pious and ascetic regimen. The most important survivors of this reevaluation were the drama of Ibsen and the music of Giovanni Palestrina. It is tempting, with this crisis in mind, to view Martyn’s contribution to the Irish Literary Theatre as, in part, rehabilitative. The crisis certainly contributed to the scathing attitude, and essentially inchoate argument, of his pseudonymous novel, Morgante the Lesser.

The Irish Literary Theatre was founded by Yeats, Martyn, and Lady Gregory in 1899, and in its early days, Martyn, as well as Yeats, was its principal playwright. By 1902, however, Martyn had resigned from the venture, partly because of artistic differences with Yeats but partly also because of the arrival of George Moore. (Moore was later to subject Martyn to merciless satire in his three-volume memoir of those years, Hail and Farewell, 1911-1914—treatment to which Martyn eventually responded in kind in The Dream Physician.)

The matter at issue between Moore and Martyn was the latter’s play The Tale of a Town. In response to Yeats’s criticism of it, Moore revised the piece, which was then staged under the title The Bending of the Bough (pr. 1900). After resigning from the Irish Literary Theatre, Martyn continued his playwriting career. He directed a large share of his energies to other areas of Irish culture, however, particularly to music.

In 1902, after protracted negotiations, the Palestrina Choir was established at the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin. The choir was exclusively Martyn’s idea, and at the time of its inauguration he referred to it as “the chief interest of my life.” This interest reflected an unorthodox approach to bringing art to the people. A unique expression of the Irish Literary Renaissance’s ethos, the choir was financed almost exclusively by Martyn. As a result of this venture’s success, Martyn devoted further time and money to beautifying provincial churches with tapestries, stained glass, and similar ornamentation.

After his break with Yeats and Moore, Martyn also developed a strong interest in, and commitment to, the Gaelic League, an organization devoted to...