 Synge's first account of life in the Aran Islands was published in the "New Ireland Review" in 1898 and his book, "", based largely on journals, was completed in 1901 and published in 1907 with illustrations by Jack Butler Yeats.Synge considered the book "my first serious piece of work".When Lady Gregory read the manuscript she advised Synge to remove any direct naming of places and to add more folk stories, but he refused to do either because he wanted to create something more realistic.