Hilary Pyle

Red-Headed Rebel, Susan L. Mitchell: Poet and Mystic of the Irish Cultural Renaissance

ISBN: 9781851322336

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Described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the nearest approach they have to a true poet’ Susan Mitchell (1866–1926) was an active and valued member of Dublin society. Originally from Carrick-on-Shannon and raised by Unionist aunts in Dublin, she rebelled against privileged society and the Protestant Church in which she was raised. By a trick of fate she exchanged life as a gentlewoman in provincial Ireland for that of a journalist working on far-sighted publications in Dublin. Objective despite her republican views, contemporary politics and the literary world were lampooned by her. Dublin in the tumultuous years from the Easter Rising of 1916, the signing of the Treaty and the Civil War is seen through her eyes. Her satirical commentary, which cuts close to the bone, provides essential reading.