THE Oscar Wilde Autumn School on Friday was devoted to a series of lectures and discussions on famous Irish women from Augusta Gregory to Hazel Lavery.
Historian Margaret Ward discussed Hanna Sheehy Skeffington's unconventional spirit: the republican feminist who stood for the Dail at the age of 66 was described by a contemporary as no hard boiled highbrow". Ward's biography of her subject is forthcoming from Attic Press.
Sinead McCoole, who recently published a biography of Hazel Lavery, said Lavery, although considered a "silly society lady" was an important figure during the Treaty negotiations. She brought the key players together in her salon and persuaded Michael Collins that independence from Britain could only be obtained gradually.
Medb Ruane lectured on the doctor, feminist and revolutionary Kathleen Lynn, about whom she is writing a biography. Kathleen Lynn was the only woman doctor of her time with nationalist sympathies: she was medical officer to Countess Markievicz's battalion in the College of Surgeons in 1916. She founded St Ultan's Infant Hospital in 1919, the first to care specifically for children.
Siobhan Campbell lectured on the Derry born novelist Kathleen Coyle. Coyle, a contemporary of Joyce, was one of the many emigre writers in his circle in the Paris of the 1930s. Coyle's novel A Flocko of Birds (1930) was recently republished by Wolfhound Press (of which Campbell is a director) after years of languishing out of print.
Cathy Leeney spoke about Augusta Gregory's play Grania, in which the mythic heroine shows independence and frankness.