Dorothy Macardle

Though she was also a teacher, playwright, and journalist, Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958) is best known today as the author of The Irish Republic, a groundbreaking history of the Irish War of Independence, and the novels The Uninvited and The Unforeseen, recently reissued to wide acclaim. Leeann Lane's biography of this underappreciated figure examines her literary output but also foregrounds her lifelong commitment to feminist politics, which often manifested itself in subtle or subversive ways. Macardle's opposition to the position of women in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, for example, was never overtly stated but instead revealed itself in the themes of the gothic novels she published throughout the 1940s. Lane places Macardle in the context of her post-1916 republicanism and later within the politics and religious ethos of the Irish post-colonial state, revealing a determined, intelligent, and independent woman whose political views were given an outlet through her art.