Irish Nationalist Women, 1900–1918

A major new history of the experiences and activities of Irish nationalist women in the early twentieth century.

Senia Pašeta (Author)

9781107677876, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2016

306 pages
23 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.45 kg

'Senia Pašeta's extremely well-researched study of early twentieth-century Irish nationalist women … wonderfully recreates the world of politically active Irish nationalist women during the turbulent years at the start of the last century, and it does so with some real sympathy for the people under scrutiny … she offers us a deeply researched and powerful account of a very significant subject. Our understanding of women's role in Irish nationalism - and therefore of Irish nationalism itself - is greatly enriched by this excellent study.' Richard English, Dublin Review of Books

This is a major new history of the experiences and activities of Irish nationalist women in the early twentieth century, from learning and buying Irish to participating in armed revolt. Using memoirs, reminiscences, letters and diaries, Senia Pašeta explores the question of what it meant to be a female nationalist in this volatile period, revealing how Irish women formed nationalist, cultural and feminist groups of their own as well as how they influenced broader political developments. She shows that women's involvement with Irish nationalism was intimately bound up with the suffrage movement as feminism offered an important framework for women's political activity. She covers the full range of women's nationalist activism from constitutional nationalism to republicanism, beginning in 1900 with the foundation of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and ending in 1918 with the enfranchisement of women, the collapse of the Irish Party and the ascendancy of Sinn Fein.

Introduction
1. The movement
2. Daughter of Ireland
3. Politics, theatre and dissent
4. Old nationalism
5. New nationalisms
6. Social activism
7. Loaded with sedition
8. The fight
9. After the Rising
10. Feminism and republicanism
11. Triumph and disenchantment
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Nationalism [JPFN], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]