(1865-1953)
Irish political activist and polemicist, founder of Inghmidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Erin), campaigner for social justice, and inspirational figure for Irish nationalists. Maud Gonne was born in Surrey, England, the daughter of Colonel Thomas Gonne and Edith Cooke. Her father was part of the British forces in Ireland, yet Gonne’s autobiography, A Servant of the Queen, described him as unconventional, favoring Irish self-government. Edith Cooke died in 1871, and in 1886, after her father’s death, Gonne inherited sufficient wealth to live independently. Suffering from incipient tuberculosis, she went to France to recuperate, met the politician Lucien Millevoye, and began a "passionate alliance," working jointly for Irish freedom and the regaining of Alsace and Lorraine for France. Their son Georges died in infancy; Iseult, born in 1894, was referred to in public as Gonne’s niece. Although Gonne discovered her sex debarred her from membership of Irish nationalist organizations, male leaders recognized her beauty and wealth as assets. She was sent to Donegal in 1891 to campaign against peasant evictions. She had been introduced to John O’Leary, veteran of the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion and a supporter of the use of physical force. She met the poet William Butler Yeats in 1899 and remained his muse for decades while spurning marriage. They worked together campaigning for political prisoner release, commemoration of the 1798 United Irish Rising, and developing a National Literary Society. Her paper, L’Irlande libre (Free Ireland, 1897-1898), carried her polemic on Queen Victoria, "The Famine Queen." The Boer War against British domination in South Africa (1899-1901) provided the opportunity to mobilize anti-British sentiment in Ireland, and Gonne helped found the Transvaal Committee. Inghmidhe na hEireann, formed in April 1900, provided women with the opportunity for political involvement. Gonne broke with Millevoye in 1900, and on meeting John MacBride, who was applauded for his role in leading the Irish fight against the British in South Africa, decided to marry. In 1903, after converting to Catholicism, she married MacBride in Paris. Their son, Sean, was born in 1904, but she filed for divorce in 1905, returning only intermittently to Ireland. Inghmidhe published Bean na hEireann (Woman of Ireland, 1908-1911) and campaigned for free school meals. During World War I, Gonne and Iseult, exiled in France, nursed the wounded. On May 5, 1916, MacBride was executed as a leader of the Easter Rising, and in 1918 Gonne returned to Ireland. Arrested by the British and imprisoned for six months, she supported Sinn Fein ("We Ourselves"—the Irish Republican party devoted to the independence of all of Ireland) during the War of Independence while Sean joined the Irish Republican Army. During the Civil War, she helped form the Women’s Prisoners Defence League, protesting against the government’s repression of dissent. Imprisoned in Kil-mainham Jail in April 1923, she won release after going on a hunger strike. She opposed the Irish Free State for the rest of her life, continuing to support political prisoners and women’s rights.
