Life
1899-1958 [var. 1889]; [var. MacArdle; occas. pseud. Margaret Callan];
b. Dundalk, to brewing family of that name; ed. UCD; taught English at
Alexandra College, where she was arrested in the classroom; active in
Gaelic League and Sinn Féin; close friend of de Valera to whom
she left the royalties of The Irish Republic; served 6 months in
Mountjoy 1922-23, during which Earth-Bound (1924) was written;
shared flat on St. Stephen’s Green with Maud Gonne; her plays incl. Atonement (1918); Ann Kavanagh (1922), and The
Old Man (1925); journalist at League of Nations, Geneva between the
wars; her semi-official history of the formation of the state after the
Rising, The Irish Republic: A Documented Chronicle [... &c]
(1937) contains an early reprinting of the text of the 1916 Proclamation;
supported refugee children in World War II, producing documentary Children
of Europe [... &c] (1949). IF DIB DIW DIH DIL ATT
Works
History, Tragedies of Kerry, 1922-23 (Dublin: Emton 1924;
[5th edn.] 1937), Do., [14th edn.] (Dublin: Irish Freedom Press
1988), 63pp., Do., [16th edn.] (Dublin: Irish Freedom Press 1998),
72pp.; The Irish Republic: A Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish
Conflict and the Partitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the
Period 1916-1923 [preface by Eamon de Valera] (London: V. Gollancz
1937; rep. 1938), 1,072pp. [reprints as infra]; Children of Europe: A Study of Liberated Countries, Their War-Time
Experiences, Their Reactions and Their Needs, with a Note on Germany (London:
Gollancz 1949; rep. 1951), [ill. Kalman Landau], 349pp.
Fiction, Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (Worcester, MA.: Harrigan; Dublin: Emton 1924); Uneasy Freehold (London: Peter Davies 1942 [var. 1941]), 304pp., rep. as The Uninvited (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran 1942), Do. (London: Corgi 1966); The Seed was Kind (London: Peter Davies 1944); Fantastic Summer (London: Peter Davies 1946), Do., as The Unforeseen (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran 1946), Do., ([London]:Transworld Publishers 1953), 277pp.; Dark Enchantment (London: P. Davies 1953).
Plays, Witches Brew: A Drama in One Act (London: H.F.W. Deane; Boston: Baker International Play Bureau 1931), 19pp.; Ann Kavanagh (NY: Samuel French 1937); The Children's Guest (London: [q.pub.] 1940) [for children]; The Loving-Cup (London: Nelson 1943), [for children];
Miscellaneous, ‘The Dramatic Art of T. C. Murray’ in The Dublin Magazine, 2 (Jan 1925), pp.393-98; Without Fanfares: Some Reflections on the Republic of Eire (Dublin: Gill 1946) [pamphlet]; Shakespeare, Man and Boy, ed. George Bott (London: Faber 1961), 260pp.
Reprints, The Irish Republic [4th edn.] (Dublin: Irish Press 1951), Do., (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [1965]), 1045pp., Do., [rev. edn.] (London: Corgi 1968), 989pp.; Do., (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 2002, 2004), 1,046pp.
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Notes
Luke Gibbons, writing of Man of Aran
(1934), ‘As Dorothy Macardle, the reviewer most sympathetic to official
government thinking, expressed it, here we had an alternative to the traditional
caricature ..., ‘I have never seen a film which produced so complete
an illusion, the taste of brine came on one’s lips ... we had a real
share in their pride, real because these are our countrymen and their
actual, constant achievements are no less than these ... We have become
almost resigned to being traduced in literature, whether under the guise
of the comic ‘Paddy’ of Victorian music halls, or the drunken
swindler of some Irish farces or the ‘gunman’ of more sombre
writers to-day. Not three generations of protesting could do as much to
rehabilitate the Irish people in the imagination of the peoples of other
countries as this faithful and beautiful motion picture will do. (Irish
Press, 7 May 1934); and ftn., Macardle was confidante of Eamon de
Valera and author of monumental history of the War of Independence, The
Irish Republic (1937).
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. II] (Cork: Royal
Carbery 1985), lists Earth Bound, stories (1924); The Seed was
Kind (1940); Fantastic Summer (1946); ‘James Connolly
and Patrick Pearse’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien, ed., The Shaping
of Modern Ireland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960); also
a work on Civil War atrocities in Kerry. Uneasy Freehold (1942),
‘a novel of women under stress and how supernatural forces act on
them’, according to A. N. Jeffares in Anglo-Irish Literature (1982).
Anne Owen Weekes, ed., Attic Guide to Irish Women Writers (Dublin: Attic Press 1993) attributes to her imprisonment in 1916 [aetat. 17], in prob. confusion with the events of 1922; cites also de Valera’s prefatory comments to her Republic, ‘... Her intimate knowledge of the period enabled her to see where close detail was essential ... Her interpretations and conclusions are her own. They do not represent the doctrines of any party. In many cases they are not in accord with my own views.’
Janet Madden-Simpson, ed., Woman’s part, An Anthology of Short Fiction by and about Irishwomen, 1890-1960 (Dublin: Arlen House 1984) [the source of the extract in Attic Guide, supra].
Eggeley Books (Cat 44) lists Tragedies of Kerry 1922-1923 (Irish Book Bureau 193?), (vi), [7]-60pp.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)