Few individuals in Irish history have courted controversy like the English-born Maud Gonne. Rich, alluring, and central to the cause of Irish independence, she battled for the rights of women and tenant farmers. Away from the public arena, Gonne's love life is perhaps as fascinating as her politics. A life-long obsession of W.B. Yeats's, she was also the lover of French right-wing politician Lucien Millevoye and later entered into a catastrophic marriage with Boer War hero and 1916 martyr Major John MacBride. This biography makes use of documentation from newly digitized French newspaper archives of the 1890s and tracks the Gonne and her beloved Millevoye through France's tumultuous Third Republic into the violent push for an Irish republic. The resulting narrative casts new light on Yeats' love poems, and affords an enthralling glimpse into sexual and cultural politics at the foundation of the new state, viewed through its chief celebrants. -- Publisher description
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