Dorothy Macardle

Dorothy MacArdle was born in Dublin and educated at University College Dublin. In 1917 she became a member of Cumann na mBan, the all-volunteer “League of Women” organized to fight against the British. As a result of this association, she was arrested by the British Army in 1918 while teaching at Alexandria College in Dublin. MacArdle opposed the signing of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and was imprisoned by the Free State in Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols during the Irish Civil War in 1922. MacArdle published "Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland" (1924), in which she recounted her Civil War experiences. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s MacArdle continued to publish short stories and plays while working as a journalist at the League of Nations and researching her authoritative history, "The Irish Republic" (1937). MacArdle started writing novels in the 1940s, the first of which, "The Uninvited" (1942), was also filmed. After the Second World War MacArdle worked with refugee children and wrote of their plight in "A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries: Their Wartime Experiences and Their Needs" (1949). She also published "Without Fanfares: Some Reflections on the Republic of Ireland" (1947), and a novel, "Dark Enchantments" (1953). MacArdle’s academic study, "Shakespeare, Man and Boy," was published posthumously in 1961.