Maud Gonne

By Nancy Cardozo and Nancy Cardoza

Book Overview

"I was twenty-three years old when the troubling of my life began...I had never thought to see in a living woman so great beauty...lineaments which Blake calls the highest beauty because it changes least from youth to age, and a stature so great that she seemed of a divine race."
Thus wrote William Butler Yeats the first time he saw Maud Gonne, the woman to whom he addressed some of the most moving love poems in the English language. Though she refused to marry him, Maud reciprocated with an extraordinary friendship which lasted a lifetime.
Maud married Irish rebel John McBride, and their divorce trial was an international scandal. Her son, Sean McBride, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
But most of all, British-born Maud loved Ireland and dedicated her life to fighting for its independence. Known as the "Irish Joan of Arc," she battled for exploited Irish tenant farmers, for starving Irish children, for the rights of women.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941533956
• ISBN13: 9780941533959
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books
• Length: 468 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.1" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Irish history made flesh

Before I read this book, all I knew of Maud Gonne was what Yeats had seen fit to tell us. And that's just not very nice, is it? This well-balanced and evocative portrait is not afraid to honestly depict the great lady's weaknesses, but it also gives us her strengths and the story of the incredibly valuable work she did for Ireland - not just for the abstraction of Eire, but gritty, real work that was to the direct benefit of children and prisioners.