Life
1870-1926; sister of Con Markievicz, and subject of Yeats’s poem;
b. Lissadell, 22 May; dg. Sir Henry Gore-Booth; accompanied her father
to West Indies and America, 1894; accompanied mother to Italy, 1895, fell
ill with suspected TB; stayed at villa of George MacDonald, novelist,
and met there Esther Roper, 1896; social worker in Manchester with Roper,
who was suffrage union organiser; life-long companions; she lobbied personally
for the reprieve of Roger Casement; joined No Conscription Fellowship;
650 pages of poetry posthumously collected; Unseen Kings, a verse
drama, rejected by Irish National Theatre Soc. as unstageable [birds flying
cross-stage]; influenced by Celtic Twilight, graceful and conventional;
Poems with intro. by Esther Roper (1929); plays, The Triumph
of Maeve, Lament for Deirdre, and The Sword of Justice;
her pacificism and the power of love are her perennial themes. PI DBIV
DIL ODQ ATT OCIL FDA
Works
Poetry, Poems (London: Longmans
& Co. 1898); Poems of Eva Gore-Booth: Complete Edition with
‘The Inner Life of the Child’, Letters, and Biographical Introduction
by Esther Roper (London: Longmans & Co. 1929), ports.; Selected Poems
of Eva Gore-Booth, ed. Ester Roper (London: Longmans & Co. 1931);
Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, ed., Voices on the Wind: Women Poets of the Celtic
Twilight (Dublin: New Island 1995)
Plays, Unseen Kings, a play in verse (London: Longmans & Co. 1904); The One and the Many (London: Longmans & Co. 1904); The Three Resurrections and The Triumph of Maeve, poems and a drama in verse (London: Longmans & Co. 1905); The Egyptian Pillar [Tower Press Booklets, ser. 2 No.3] (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1907); The Sorrowful Princess (London: Longmans & Co. 1907); The Agate Lamp (London: Longmans & Co. 1912); The Perilous Light [Twentieth Century Poetry Series] (London: Erskine MacDonald 1915); The Death of Fionavar, from The Triumph of Maeve (London: Erskine MacDonald 1916), 87pp., ill. Countess Markievicz; Broken Glory (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1917) [var. 1918]; The Sword of Justice (London: Headley Bros. 1918), play; The Shepherd of Eternity (1925); The House of Three Windows (London: Longmans & Co. 1926); The Buried Life of Deirdre, play (1930).
Prose, A Psychological and Poetic Approach of Christ in the Fourth Gospel (1923); The Inner Kingdom (London: Longmans & Co. 1926); The Word’s Pilgrim (London: Longmans & Co. 1927).
Pamphlets, Women Workers and Parliamentary Representation (Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile and Other Workers Representative Committee, c.1904); Women’s Right to Work (Manchester c.1908); ‘Women and the Suffrage,’ in Living Age, 259 (1908); The Case for Women’s Suffrage (Fisher and Unwin, ‘Religious Aspects of Non-Resistance’, (Pamph., 3 League of Peace 1915). See also articles and poems in Esther Roper, ed., Prison Letters of Countess Markievicz [?rep.] (1986)
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- Michael Begnal, ‘Eva Gore-Booth on Behalf of Roger Casement: An Unpublished Appeal’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 1 (Spring 1971), pp.11-16 [infra];
- Gifford Lewis, Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper, a Biography (Lon. 1988);
- Rosangela Barone, 2 vols., The Oak Tree and the Olive Tree (Edizione da Sud, Bari, 1990) [study of Eva Gore-Booth as seen through her poetry];
- Frederick S. Lapisardi, ed., The Plays of Eva Gore-Booth (Mellen Press, 1991) [infra];
- Emma Donoghue, ‘How could I fear and hold thee by the hand’: The Poetry of Eva Gore Booth’, in Éibhear Walshe, ed., Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing (Cork UP 1997), pp.16-42;
- Therese Ryan, ‘Eva Gore-Booth’ [MA Dissertation] (UUC 1992);
- Katie O’Donovan, review of Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, ed., Voices on the Wind: Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight, in The Irish Times (10 Sept. 1995), [infra];
- Dermot James, The Gore-Booths of Lissadell (Woodfield Press 2004), 400pp.
Notes
British Library holds, Poems, with biog. sketch by Esther Roper,
and portrait (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1929), xx+653pp.; The
Agate Lamp (London 1912), 118pp.; Broken Glory (Maunsel 1918),
poems; The Buried Life of Deirdre (1930), xi+62pp.; Egyptian
Pillar (Maunsel 1907), 50pp.; House of Three Wonders
[poems], with a portrait (1926), xvi+113pp.; The Inner Kingdom,
religious address (London 1926); The Perilous Light [poems] (London
1915), 64pp.; Psychological and Poetic Approach to the Study of Christ
in the Fourth Gospel (Longmans 1923), xv+363pp.; Shepard of Eternity
and other poems (Longmans 1923), x+121pp.; The Sorrowful Princess,
[verse drama] (London 1907), 92pp.; Sword of Justice, play, [1918],
38pp.; The Three Resurections and The Triumph of Maeve,
poems and drama in verse (1905), 288pp.; Death of Fionvar from The
Triumph of Maeve, decorated by Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markiewicz
(London 1916), 87pp.; Unseen Kings [poems] (London 1904), 87pp.;
The World’s a Pilgrim, imaginary conversations (Longmans
1927), viz Buddha and Pythagoras, Francis of Assisi, Giordano Bruno, Michelangelo
and Pheidias, et al., 5, 3-117 [1]p.; Selected Poems, biographical
note by Esther Roper (1933), 156pp.
Ann Owens Weekes, ed., Attic Guide to Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers; lived in England 1914-1916 and returned to visit her sister in prison on the day when Connolly was executed; Sec. Women’s Textile and Other Workers’ Representation Committe; ed. The Women's Labour News;
Oxford Dictionary of Quotation selects ‘The Little Waves of Breffny go stumbling through the soul’. Also in Voices on the Wind, Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995), 144pp. ALSO, included in Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, Voices on the Wind, Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995) [with Katharine Tynan; Susan Mitchell; Nora Chesson Hopper; Ethna Carbery; Dora Sigerson Shorter]. ALSO The Book of Irish Poetry (1914), ed. A. P. Graves, and New Songs, ed. George Russell (1904) [with Fitzhenry, Morton, AP Graves, Padraic Gregory, John Cooke, Katherine Hoagland, and Tynan]. She is included in R. M. Fox’s Rebel Irishwomen (1935).
Belfast Public Library holds Broken Glory (1902); Buried Life of Deirdre (1930); Poems of Eva Gore Booth (1929); Selected Poems (1933); Perilous Light (1915).
Unseen Kings performed at the Abbey in 1911 by the Independent
Dramatic Company, run by Countess Markievicz; though rejected by INTS.
The Sorrowful Princess, a verse drama, makes use of from Wallis-Budge’s Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Prison Letters (p.56) contains an article by Eva Gore-Booth in the Socialist Review attempting to explain to an English audience the reasons behind the 1916 Rising and the result of the executions appeared. (See Therese Ryan, MA thesis, UUC.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)