Readers who come to this book (Gollancz, Jos. 6d.) in
search of reminiscences about Yeats, Lady Gregory and other early figures of the Irish literary movement will be disappointed. They are touched on only incidentally, and the author's main concern is with the earlier phases of her political career. Maud Gonne, the daughter of an Army officer and an English mother, was driven into revolutionary politics by the sight of evictions ; she became, as is well known, a bitter and practical opponent of British Imperialism in all its forms ; a legend, sprung not only from her beauty, now has grown up about her name. This account of the first half of her life as a child and later in Viceregal and in revolutionary society in Ireland, on missions to America, as a refugee and a rather theoretical plotter in France, as an agitator in England, is written simply, tersely, and on occasion humorously. It makes a remarkable and moving story, which it is very sincerely to be hoped will be continued.
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