29 Facts About Eva Gore-Booth

Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth was an Irish poet, theologian, and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist.

Eva Gore-Booth was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of Constance Gore-Booth, later known as the Countess Markievicz.

Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth was born in County Sligo, Ireland, to Sir Henry and Lady Georgina Gore-Booth of Lissadell.

Eva Gore-Booth was the third of five children born to the 5th Baronet and his wife and the first of her siblings to be born at Lissadell House.

Eva Gore-Booth learned French, German, Latin and Greek and developed a love of poetry that was instilled by her maternal grandmother.

Eva Gore-Booth's father was a notable Arctic explorer and, during a period of absence from the estate in the 1870s, her mother, Lady Georgina, established a school of needlework for women at Lissadell.

In 1894, Eva Gore-Booth joined her father on his travels around North America and the West Indies.

Eva Gore-Booth's struggle began when Gore-Booth became a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

The setting up of this committee led to Eva Gore-Booth meeting Christabel Pankhurst who felt campaigned for women's rights.

In May 1906 Eva Gore-Booth was present in the suffrage deputation to Campbell Bannerman.

Eva Gore-Booth's true feeling of helplessness after the failure of this deputation was captured in two poems, which she wrote.

In 1908 Eva Gore-Booth was a delegate to the Labour Party Conference at Hull where she proposed a motion in favour of women's suffrage.

The end of 1909 saw Eva Gore-Booth help to run the radical suffragist general election campaign at Rossendale where a candidate was put forward but was defeated.

In 1910, Eva Gore-Booth showed her support for the New Constitutional Society For Women's Suffrage and in 1911 with Roper, she attended a meeting in London of the Fabian Women's Group.

In December 1913, Eva Gore-Booth signed the "Open Christmas Letter" to women of Germany and Austria.

Eva Gore-Booth continued to work for peace, writing poetry and for a privately circulated journal, Urania, for the rest of her life.

When Gore-Booth was embarking on her writing career she was visited by W B Yeats who was very much taken with her work.

Eva Gore-Booth is writing love verse from one woman to another.

Eva Gore-Booth was one of a group of editors of the magazine Urania that published issues three times a year from 1916 to 1940.

Many New Woman issues were discussed such as gender equality, suffrage and marriage but Eva Gore-Booth went further than that to write poetry about women loving women.

How intimate her relations were with Roper is controversially discussed; however, letters and poems Eva Gore-Booth dedicated to Roper suggest a romantic love between the two women.

Just weeks after the 1916 Rising, Eva Gore-Booth traveled to Dublin accompanied by Roper and was pivotal in the efforts to reprieve the death sentence of her sister Constance Markievicz awarded for her instrumental role in the 1916 Rising.

Eva Gore-Booth's poetry composed during this period reflects the personal trauma and horror she was exposed to visiting her sister in solitary confinement.

Eva Gore-Booth further campaigned to abolish the death sentence overall and to reform prison standards and attended the trial of Irish nationalist and fellow poet Roger Casement thus showing solidarity and support for the overturning of his death sentence.

Eva Gore-Booth died in her home in Hampstead, London she shared with Roper until her death.

Eva Gore-Booth was buried alongside Roper in St John's churchyard, Hampstead.

Eva Gore-Booth was seen as the figure head and founder of this journal as it tied into her theosophical feminist beliefs.

Eva Gore-Booth is buried alongside Roper in Hampstead in England and her tombstone reads "Life that is Love is God".

Eva Gore-Booth has been acknowledged by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions as LGBT and Worker's Rights role model.