Author Description

"Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and two of her sisters were part of a pioneering generation of female university students determined to play an active role in political developments. In 1908 Hanna helped found the Irish Women's Franchise League and by 1912 she had served her first term in prison for militantly campaigning for suffragism. With her husband, the feminist and pacifist Frank Sheehy - who took her name and also became Sheehy Skeffington on marriage - she helped to edit the long-running Irish Citizen. During the Easter Rising he urged non-violence but she sympathised with revolutionaries like James Connolly and took supplies to the rebels. Frank was to become one of the victims of those times, and she never forgave the brutality of the British in trying to cover up his murder. Later on she proved herself fearless in her fight for justice, confronting both the British Prime Minister and the President of the United States of America." "She was a pivotal figure in feminist, labour and nationalist movements for almost half a century, supporting such causes as Sinn Fein, Russian solidarity, republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and opposing the 1937 Constitution."--BOOK JACKET.