Author Biography
Dr Margaret Ward is a feminist historian whose highly acclaimed book Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism, first published in 1983, has become a classic text. She has also written biographies of Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and edited works on the role of women in nationalist and suffrage movements in Ireland. She is currently Visiting Fellow in History at Queen's University of Belfast.
Description
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was the most significant feminist in twentieth-century Ireland - an activist, writer and polemicist of the highest rank. An advocate of feminism, socialism, and republicanism, her writings - published in Britain and America as well as Ireland - transcended national boundaries. In these pages we experience the excitement of the suffrage years, anti-war campaigns, prison experiences, the impact of the brutal killing of her husband, meetings with Prime Minister Asquith and President Wilson, the bitter years of civil war, impressions of Bolshevik Russia, inter-war Europe, her friendship with Constance Markievicz, debates with Sean O'Casey, and her involvement in feminist campaigns against the exclusion of women from public life during the 1930s and 1940s. Her organisational abilities were recognised by the leaders of the Easter Rising, who agreed she would be the sole female member of a civil provisional government, to be formed if the Rising was a success.She remained an activist throughout her life, an advocate for a Workers' Republic, serving a prison sentence in Armagh jail in 1933, campaigning against the Constitution in 1937 and standing for election to the Dail as an independent feminist in 1943.Her political writings, including book and theatre reviews, newspaper articles, reminiscences, interviews, obituaries, and analysis of key events in the first half of the twentieth century- authoritative, passionate and witty - provide the reader with an indispensable source for understanding the personalities and the issues behind the long march for women's equality and national independence in Ireland.
'Scholars of women’s history enjoyed a wealth of productions celebrating one hundred years of female suffrage, including exhibitions, public talks, dramatic productions and, of course, academic publications. This volume of the political writings and memoirs of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, edited by Margaret Ward, is undoubtedly one of the most important volumes produced during this time.
Sonja Tiernan, English Historical Review, June 2019
You can read the full review here.
'The entire collection helps to paint a vivid picture of one of Ireland's most remarkable pioneering and progressive political activists'
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, September 2019
You can read the full review here.
'“Her great heart stopped too soon”, the Irish Press observed in its obituary. “It was worn out in the pursuit of many causes..”. That great heart still beats through her writings and Ward has done a great service in collecting them.'
Mary Carolan, Women's History Association of Ireland, August 2018
You can read the full review here.
‘Hanna’s life and work now made available in this definitive collection was certainly a model for women, but the question remains why did the model fail to engage Irish women until the later generation of Irish feminists?’
Irish Literary Supplement. Fall 2018
You can read the full review here.
‘This is a thematically organised work that scholars of Irish and women’s history will surely turn to time and again …’
Jennifer Martin, Books Ireland, March 2018
You can read the full review here
'Hanna and her brothers and sisters were brought up in a political household, which influenced even the games they played.’
Margaret Ward, Irish Examiner, Feb 2018
You can read the full piece here
‘What is striking is how fresh Sheehy Skeffington's voice still seems, particularly on the long campaign for women's rights. ... The book is particularly vivid in charting the struggle for suffrage -- a timely subject ahead of next year's centenary of (some) women gaining the vote. ... Hers was a journey that deserves commemoration, and this new collection does so with gusto and authority.’
Catherine Healy, Sunday Business Post, Nov 2017
You can read the full review here
‘...an extensive and valuable collection that makes for a thoroughly engaging read. ...a tremendous primary resource to support the still neglected, but growing, area of Irish women's history and gender history more broadly.’
Sonja Tiernan, The Irish Catholic, Nov 2017
You can read the full review here
‘The value of this kind of volume is demonstrated by the immediacy, passion and humour of the prose, happening in real time when no one knew the outcome. … Margaret Ward has done us a service in assembling these writings carefully, so that a clear and distinctive voice can be heard in her own words.’
Catriona Crowe, Irish Times, Oct 2017
You can read the full review here
‘What's most striking about Sheehy Skeffington's prose is its sheer resilience, nobility, and belief in the concept of justice at all costs: even in the face of despair, grief, and anguish. … I would place [Hanna’s] prison diaries alongside writing from other political figures who penned some of their best work behind bars, such as Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, and Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi.’
J. P. O’Malley, Sunday Independent, Oct 2017
You can read the full review here
‘She was a truly remarkable woman and deserves nothing less than to have her writings presented to us by an historian of the calibre of Margaret Ward and more importantly to have them read, the better to inspire our thoughts and actions today.’
Liberty newspaper, Oct 2017
You can read the full review here
'The collection of Hanna’s writing, which also comprises Hanna’s unpublished memoir fragments, is an important addition to our understanding of a woman ahead of her time.’
Martina Devlin, Irish Independent, Oct 2017
You can read the full review here
‘The production is handsome and a significant contribution to the recovery of Irish women’s history in the gestation, birth, and withering away of the national revolution.’
Emmet O'Connor, Irish History Review, Oct 2017
You can read the full review here
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