MARKIEVICZ, Constance. A Call to the Women of Ireland.

Being a Lecture delivered to the Students' National Literary Society, Dublin, under the title of 'Women, Ideals, and the Nation'. Dublin: Fergus O'Connor, 1918. 16 pp. A very good copy of this scarce nationalist pamphlet.

Constance Gore-Booth (Countess Markievicz, 1868-1927), revolutionary, was born to an Anglo-Irish ascendancy family, and was educated at the family seat in Lissadell, Co. Sligo. She is one of the most romanticised political figures of the early twentieth century. She studied painting in Paris, where she met her Polish husband Casimir Markievicz, whom she later amicably separated from.
She became a follower of Sinn Féin but disagreed with the approach of its leader, Arthur Griffith. She founded a youth organisation, Fianna Eireann and joined Inghinidhe na hEireann for which she wrote 'A Call to the Women of Ireland' and contributed also to the suffragette newspaper, 'Bean na hEireann'.
Later she worked closely with James Connolly, ran a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall during the Dublin lock-out of 1913. She became an officer in the Irish Citizen Army, this prompted the resignation of its general secretary, Sean O'Casey. During the Easter Rebellion of 1916 she served as second-in-command to Michael Mallin at St. Stephen's Green, sentenced to death but was reprieved on account of her sex. She was the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons in 1918, but as a member of Sinn Féin did not take her seat.

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