Eva Gore-Booth
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Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist. She was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of Constance Gore-Booth, later known as the Countess Markiewicz.
Both she and her sister, Constance, who later married and became Countess Markiewicz and a prominent Irish revolutionary, reacted against their privileged background and devoted themselves to helping the poor and disadvantaged. Eva became involved in the suffragette movement and in 1890, with help of Constance, founded a suffrage society in Sligo.
In 1895, Eva became seriously ill with tuberculosis. In the following year, while convalescing in Italy, she met and fell in love with Esther Roper at the villa of Scottish writer George MacDonald. Esther Roper was a young English woman who was then secretary of the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage. Instead of returning to Ireland, Eva went to live in Manchester with Esther. They became joint secretaries of the Women's Textile and Other Workers Representation Committee.
Eva was also an accomplished poet. Her first published volume was highly praised by Yeats. After World War I, Eva and Esther became members of the Committee for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and worked for prison reform.
As she grew older, Eva was forced to give up active work but continued writing poetry. Esther took care of her throughout her long illness and they were together at the end. Eva died in 1926 at her home in Hampstead, London.
After Eva's death, Esther collected many of her poems for publication and wrote a biographical introduction to them. Esther was extremely reticent, and little is known of her final years. Constance wrote of her: "The more one knows her, the more one loves her, and I feel so glad Eva and she were together, and so thankful that her love was with Eva to the end."
[edit] Sources
- Gifford Lewis, ‘Booth, Eva Selina Gore- (1870–1926)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 29 July 2006
