Gonne, Maud

▪ Irish patriot

married name  Maud MacBride 

born 1865, Aldershot, Hampshire, Eng.

died April 27, 1953, Dublin, Ire.

      Irish patriot, actress, and feminist, one of the founders of Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”), and an early member of the theatre movement started by her longtime suitor, W.B. Yeats (Yeats, William Butler).

      The daughter of an Irish army officer and his English wife, Gonne made her debut in St. Petersburg and later acted as hostess for her father when he was assistant adjutant general in Dublin. Converted to republicanism by an eviction she saw during the 1880s, she became a speaker for the Land League, founded the Daughters of Ireland (a nationalist organization), and helped to organize the Irish brigades that fought against the British in the South African War.

      In the meantime Gonne had become a noted actress on the Irish stage. In 1889 Yeats fell in love with her, and the heroine of his first play, Cathleen ni Houlihan (1892), was modeled after her; she played the title role when the play was first produced at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Gonne refused Yeats's many marriage proposals, however, and in 1903 she married a fellow revolutionary, Major John MacBride.

      Gonne remained active in movements to release Irish political prisoners and took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, after which her husband was shot and she herself was imprisoned. Their son, Sean MacBride (MacBride, Seán), later became foreign minister of Ireland and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. A book of her reminiscences, A Servant of the Queen (i.e., Ireland), was published in 1938.

Additional Reading

Samuel Levenson, Maud Gonne (1976); Nancy Cardozo, Lucky Eyes and a High Heart (1978, reprinted as Maud Gonne, 1990).

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