Hanna Sheehy Skeffington By Margaret Ward

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.