Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eva Gore-Booth
-
Standard Name: Gore-Booth, Eva
Birth Name: Eva Selina Gore-Booth
In addition to her intense suffrage and labour activism, EGB
wrote poetry, periodical essays, political pamphlets, religious criticism, plays, and an autobiograpical sketch. Her work was admired by her contemporaries Katharine Tynan
, Æ (George Russell
), and W. B. Yeats
. In 1935, critic Richard Fox
wrote that EGB
had an assured place in Irish literary history, but in the early twenty-first century all of her texts are out of print. She is now best known as the sister of Irish patriot and feminist Constance Markievicz
, and for Yeats
's elegy In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz.
Donoghue, Emma. “’How could I fear and hold thee by the hand?’: The Poetry of Eva Gore-Booth”. Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing, edited by Éibhear Walshe and Éibhear Walshe, St Martin’s Press, pp. 16-42.
CCM
also illustrated the text for Eva Gore-Booth
's 1916 play, The Death of Fionavar from The Triumph of Maeve. This text received more public attention than most of Gore-Booth's other works, mainly because...
Textual Production
Constance, Countess Markievicz
Roper had been the companion of CCM
's late sister Eva Gore-Booth
; both had been very close to Markievicz. The collection included letters written by Markievicz between 1916 and 1926, both inside and outside...
Intertextuality and Influence
Constance, Countess Markievicz
CCM
appears in many poems by her sister Eva Gore-Booth
, especially after the Easter Rising of 1916. Gore-Booth's several poems about the event and about her own and her sister's roles in it include...
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. Pandora.
40-1
Lewis, Gifford. Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper: A Biography. Pandora Press.
61
politics
Constance, Countess Markievicz
Constance, Countess Markievicz,
spent time in Manchester where, along with her sister Eva Gore-Booth
and Eva's companion Esther Roper
, she campaigned against a Licensing Bill which would have banned women from working as barmaids.
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. Pandora.
73-4
Fictionalization
Constance, Countess Markievicz
W. B. Yeats
wrote his famous poem In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth
and Con Markievicz, about the two Irish sisters, activists, and writers.
Smith, D. J. “The Countess and the Poets: Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz in the Work of Irish Writers”. Journal of Irish Literature, Vol.
12
, No. 1, pp. 3-63.
52
Cultural formation
Constance, Countess Markievicz
CCM
was a nationalist rebel whose work for the cause of Ireland led to five terms served in prison. Her parents were Anglo-Irish, Protestant property owners. The family divided their time between their Irish country...
Family and Intimate relationships
Constance, Countess Markievicz
CCM
was very close to one of her two sisters, Eva Gore-Booth
, who became a writer, suffragist, and labour activist. Constance's biographer Anne Haverty
describes their relationship as almost symbiotic.
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. Pandora.
12
Residence
Constance, Countess Markievicz
CCM
spent much of her childhood at Lissadell. Here, she and her sister Eva
claimed a drawing-room, the glory hole, as their own, where they painted and wrote poetry respectively. Constance also developed...
Wealth and Poverty
Constance, Countess Markievicz
Despite his title and their family backgrounds, Constance and Casimir were not wealthy. CCM
's father kept to the rule of male inheritance and within that primogeniture: when he died in 1900, he left almost...
