Dorothy Macardle
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Dorothy Macardle (1899 — 1958) was an Irish author and historian. Her book, The Irish Republic, is one of the most frequently cited narrative accounts of the Anglo-Irish War and its aftermath. She is generally regarded as the definitive contemporary historian from the republican anti-treaty perspective.
Dorothy Macardle (sometimes known as Dorothy McArdle) was born in Dundalk, Ireland in 1899. She was member of the family who owned Macardle's Beer. She was educated in University College, Dublin. A Protestant republican sympathiser who was a member of the Gaelic League, Macardle joined Cumann na mBan in 1917 and was arrested while teaching in a classroom by the British Army in 1918.
When the republican movement split in 1921—22 over the Anglo-Irish Treaty Macardle sided with the Anti-Treaty side, and was imprisoned during the Irish Civil War by the new Irish Free State government in Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols in 1922. Macardle recounted her Civil War experiences in Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924). Macardle became a playwright in the next two decades. In her dramatic writing she used the pseudonym Margaret Callan. During this time she worked as a journalist at the League of Nations. She also researched her mammoth book The Irish Republic which was first published in 1937.
She left the royalties from The Irish Republic to her close friend Éamon de Valera, who wrote the foreword to the book. Some print runs of the book featured a picture of de Valera alongside the tricolour on the front cover.
Her published works include:
- Tragedies of Kerry, 1922-23
- Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924)
- The Irish Republic (published 1937, 1938, 1951, 1968 and subsequently)
- Uneasy Freehold (1942, basis for the movie The Uninvited1944)
- A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries: Their Wartime Experiences and Their Needs (1949)
- Without Fanfares: Some Reflections on the Republic of Ireland (1947)
- "The Uninvited" (1942) (novel) (made into movie with Ruth Hussey and Ray Milland)
- Dark Enchantment (1953) (novel)
- "The Unforeseen" (date unknown) (novel)
- Shakespeare, Man and Boy (published posthumously in 1961)
She died, somewhat disillusioned with the new Irish State (especially regarding its treatment of women) of cancer in hospital in Drogheda aged 59.
