33 Facts About Maud Gonne

Maud Gonne MacBride was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress.

Maud Gonne was of Anglo-Irish descent and was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of people evicted in the Land Wars.

Maud Gonne actively agitated for home rule and then for the republic declared in 1916.

Maud Gonne was born in England at Tongham near Aldershot, Hampshire, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne of the 17th Lancers, and his wife, Edith Frith Gonne, born Cook.

Maud Gonne accompanied him and remained with him until his death in 1886.

In France, Maud Gonne met Lucien Millevoye, a married journalist with fervid right-wing politics, a supporter of the revanchist General Boulanger.

Maud Gonne's mission was Ireland, and together they would constitute an alliance against the British Empire.

Maud Gonne was a very wealthy woman and was free to live as she pleased.

Maud Gonne travelled early in 1888 on a clandestine Boulangist mission to Russia, where she met the notable Pall Mall Gazette editor W T Stead, who wrote of meeting in St Petersburg "one of the most beautiful women of the world".

Maud Gonne returned to Ireland and worked for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail.

Maud Gonne was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation.

Maud Gonne was distraught, and buried him in a large memorial chapel.

Maud Gonne's purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis.

Maud Gonne's daughter by Millevoye, Iseult Maud Gonne, was born in August 1894.

Maud Gonne portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces which had been "lost" to the British.

Maud Gonne was already spending much of her time in Paris.

Maud Gonne refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals.

In Paris in 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud Gonne married Major John MacBride, who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War.

Maud Gonne demanded sole custody of their son, but MacBride refused, and a divorce case began in Paris on 28 February 1905.

In 1916, Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either.

Maud Gonne had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings.

Maud Gonne chaired several meetings of international groups to build sympathy for her causes among the American, British and French publics.

Maud Gonne became known for her eloquence in her political speeches and they were credited for animating the founding of new Irish nationalist organisations.

Maud Gonne wanted to be considered seriously: her idea was to get affiliation with the English Red Cross, and wrote to Geneva to gain an international profile for the new nationalist organisation.

Maud Gonne worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence.

Maud Gonne naturally accompanied Gonne on a tour of County Cork, seat of the most fervent revolutionary activity.

The committee that set up White Cross in Ireland asked Maud Gonne to join in January 1921 to distribute funds to victims administered by.

Maud Gonne was a leading figure in the Catholic monetary reform movement in Ireland in the 1930s.

Maud Gonne met and was photographed with the Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose when he visited Ireland in 1936.

Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen, a reference to both a vision she had of the Irish queen of old, Kathleen Ni Houlihan and an ironic title considering Gonne's Irish Nationalism and rejection of the British monarchy.

Maud Gonne was to attract the admiration of literary figures including Ezra Pound, Lennox Robinson and Liam O'Flaherty.

Maud Gonne was later a founding member of Amnesty International and its Chairman, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Maud Gonne died in Clonskeagh, aged 86, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.