Dorothy Macardle

Dorothy Macardle (1889-23 December 1958) was an Irish author and historian. Her book, The Irish Republic, is one of the most frequently cited narrative accounts of the Anglo-Irish War and its aftermath. She is generally regarded as the definitive contemporary historian from the republican anti-treaty perspective.

Biography

Dorothy Macardle (alternatively spelt McArdle) was born in Dundalk, Ireland in 1889 into a wealthy brewing family, famous for their Macardle's Ale, and was raised Roman Catholic. She received her secondary education in Alexandra College, Dublin –- a school under the management of the Church of Ireland -- and later attended University College, Dublin. Upon graduating, she returned to teach English at Alexandra. Macardle was a member of the Gaelic League and later joined Cumann na mBan in 1917. In 1918 (during the War of Independence) Macardle was arrested by the RIC while teaching at Alexandra -- she was eventually dismissed in 1923, towards the latter end of the Irish Civil War, because of her anti-Treatyite sympathies and activities..

When the republican movement split in 1921-22 over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as referred to above, Macardle sided with Éamon de Valera and the anti-Treaty Irregulars. She was imprisoned by the fledgling Free State government in 1922, during the Civil War, and served time in both Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols.

Macardle recounted her Civil War experiences in Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924). Macardle became a playwright in the next two decades. In her dramatic writing she used the pseudonym Margaret Callan. During this time she worked as a journalist at the League of Nations. She also researched her mammoth book The Irish Republic which was first published in 1937. Her political opponents considered her to be a hagiographer and apologist for her extreme political views.

She died in 1958 and the age of 69 of cancer in hospital in Drogheda. Though she was somewhat disillusioned with the new Irish State (in particular, regarding its treatment of women), she left the royalties from The Irish Republic to her close friend Éamon de Valera, who wrote the foreword to the book. De Valera visited her when she was dying and prayed constantly, but without succees, for her conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.

Published Works

• Tragedies of Kerry, 1922-23
• Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924)
• The Irish Republic (published 1937, 1938, 1951, 1968 and subsequently)
• Uneasy Freehold (1942, basis for the 1944 movie The Uninvited)
• A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries: Their Wartime Experiences and Their Needs (1949)
• Without Fanfares: Some Reflections on the Republic of Ireland (1947)
• "The Uninvited" (1942) (novel) American title of "Uneasy Freehold" (1941)(made into movie with Ruth Hussey and Ray Milland)
• The Dark Enchantment (1953) (a novel set in Provence)
• "The Unforeseen" (1946) (novel set in Ireland) American title of "Fantastic Summer" (1946)
• Shakespeare, Man and Boy (published posthumously in 1961)

References