Maud Gonne: Ireland's Joan of Arc

In this autobiographical study of Maud Gonne, the woman who spurned the love of W.B.Yeats, the author shows her to have played a significant part in Irish life and politics. Her political career began with the glamour of an espionage assignment in Czarist Russia but she soon made the cause of Irish freedom her life's work. As a woman of independent means she was able to escape many of the stifling conventions of Victorian Britain - in Ireland she was the symbol of romantic nationalism. Although many men were inspired by her, Maud Gonne was more concerned with helping women to take an independent role in Irish life. She founded a nationalist women's group called Daughters of Erin which gave many women their first taste of political action.