May Laffan

Although she is relatively unknown today, ML 's journal attack on the convent education system, her four novels, one novella, and four short stories about late nineteenth-century Ireland (most published anonymously) were controversial and well-known in her time. She was also responsible for a translation and miscellaneous political writings. Her work deals with explicitly political subjects, such as Irish Home Rule, the Fenians, and poverty. She voices sympathy for the condition of the Irish people melded with a desire to achieve change through educational reform. Her writing is lively, and her characterizations particularly good.