Daughters of Erin: Five Women Of the Irish Renascence by Elizabeth Coxhead [U.K. FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION] 1979 • Colin Smythe

Daughters of Erin: Five Women of the Irish Renascence by Elizabeth Coxhead

U.K. FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION [1979] COLIN SMYTHE

Vintage U.K. trade paperback in excellent condition.  Includes W.B. Yeats Sligo Abbey postcard found inside.

Book has mild shelf wear to cover.

Pages look and read like new!

'Ireland, more than most, is a man's country', but Miss Coxhead shows how five colourful and dynamic women overcame the handicap of their sex and achieved triumphs that any man could envy.

They are Maud Gonne (1866-1953), the stunning beauty for whom Yeats wrote many of his poems, and whose achievements as agitator and social worker included the aversion, single-handed, of a famine; her fellow prisoner in Holloway, Countess Constance Markievicz (1868-1927), the only uniformed woman officer in the Easter Rising of 1916; Sarah Purser (1848-1943) portrait painter, the driving force behind the Irish stained glass movement, and the utterer of such mots as 'Some men kiss and tell, but George Moore tells and doesn't kiss'; and the two most dazzling of the Abbey Theatre actresses, Sara Allgood (1883-1950) and her sister Maire O'Neill (1887-1952), Synge's last love and inspiration.

Each was a remarkable character and Miss Coxhead portrays them with rare skill, and a judicious blend of affection and detachment, laced with a nice medium-dry humour. Lady Gregory has already established her as an authority on the Irish renascence and in writing Daughters of Erin she has drawn on the personal recollections of many surviving friends of her various heroines. She has even discovered new letters to Yeats and new letters and love poems of Synge. This is an important book for students of Irish history, art, literature and drama. It is also a triumphant celebration of human achievement that has delighted a wide audience.