This first full-length biography of Mary Hayden is long overdue given her prominent leadership and activism in overlapping circles and movements that shaped late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish life. Joyce Padbury's study is chronologically based and divided into eleven chapters, each dealing with Hayden's contribution to education, feminism, social reform and nationalism.

Hayden's life from 1862 to 1942 spanned a period of change, opportunity and disappointment for women. Born into a middle-class Victorian family living in Dublin, as a woman she soon realised that she was expected to conform to social mores, that women had fewer rights, roles and opportunities than men, and that women were considered to be subordinate in a patriarchal society. Education, travel and the early death of her mother, Mary Ann (née Ryan), shaped her independent character and growing awareness of the anomalies of women's lives. Sometimes Hayden expressed a ‘wish to be a man’ (p. 52), and the author convincingly argues that Hayden's pursuit of the education available to men was her way of dissenting against the inadequacy of marriage and motherhood assigned to most women at the time. Impatience with such narrow conventions was a continuous theme in Hayden's life.

In October 1884 Hayden was in her second year studying modern literature when the first women graduated from the Royal University of Ireland, locating her at the centre of the expansion of educational opportunities for women which offered them the possibility of careers and financial independence. Her teaching career began in the respective Dominican and Alexandra colleges preparing women for the Royal University examinations. Hayden was also moving towards an academic career in history. She was one of the first two women to win the junior fellowship of the university in 1895. That initiated her path up the academic ladder detailed in five chapters of the book. In 1909 she became a lecturer in Irish history in University College Dublin (U.C.D.) and the first professor of modern Irish history in 1911. While this scholarly career gave her a sense of security and status, it was also marked by resistance and discrimination against women academics and students, and sexist attitudes, not greatly expanded on here.

During the late nineteenth century Hayden showed little interest in the land reform and home rule campaigns then dominating Irish politics. But the Irish literary revival interested her and soon she became active in both the National Literary Society and the Gaelic League. Membership of these organisations awakened her national pride and nationalist sympathies but unlike her friends, such as Patrick Pearse, did not lead her into militant republican circles.

Reformist concerns also interested Hayden. She visited the Magdalen Asylum in High Park in Drumcondra, Dublin, where she lamented the ‘sad waste of human life’ and the double standard that consigned a ‘fallen’ woman ‘to shame and … a bitter expiation’ while the man was applauded for his ‘gallantry’ or mildly condemned for his ‘peccadillo’ (p. 93). Improving conditions for poorer women and children awakened her social conscience and led her towards feminism, suffrage and women's rights. By 1914, parallel to her work in U.C.D., she was heavily engaged in the suffrage campaign. She believed that education for women was integral to women's performance of the duties of citizenship and as full members of society. Even though the onset of war in 1914 and radicalisation of Irish nationalism leading to the 1916 Rising divided the suffrage movement, Hayden did not mind whether enfranchisement of women was awarded by a Westminster or Dublin parliament. When the bill was passed in London in 1918, Hayden and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington among others, were identified by a journalist as accompanying the pioneering suffragist Anna Haslam to the polling station.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Hayden's professional life expanded in U.C.D. Publishing articles and book reviews, her sole history book, A short history of the Irish people, written with George A. Moonan, was published in 1921. The authors made no claim to originality and admitted it was written from a nationalist perspective. It became the main school and college textbook into the 1960s. Hayden also remained a commanding figure within political and public circles. She accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) and William T. Cosgrave's government but was among the few women who opposed the ‘reactionary and paternalist’ (p. 278) positions of the Cosgrave and then Éamon de Valera governments towards women. She campaigned against legislation that undermined women's citizenship rights, particularly their right to sit on juries, and restrictions that affected women's employment and career prospects. Hayden favoured the participation of women in the formulation of public policy because it would bring new insights into discussions about all aspects of national life. Hayden is probably best known for her opposition to articles 40, 41, and 45 concerning the status of women in the 1937 constitution. Padbury details her prominent role as leader of the National University of Ireland Women Graduates Association (N.U.W.G.A.) in the high-profile campaign to secure amendments not just to the above articles but also articles 9 on citizenship and 16 on voting rights in the draft constitution. The N.U.W.G.A. and other female deputations secured a significant amendment to articles 9 and 16 with the inclusion of the phrase ‘without distinction of sex’ (p. 295) but failed to secure any amendment or deletion of the other articles. After her retirement in 1938 she continued working with the poor and was active on behalf of women graduates. She remained a scholar and feminist through to her death in 1942.

This short review does not do justice to Padbury's industrious mining of the fifty-nine volumes of Hayden's diaries and papers and all the other attendant collections and secondary sources, to present what another reviewer correctly called a ‘page-turner’ of a book. Reading this elegantly-written biography brings Mary Hayden to life as a public intellectual and scholar with conflicted emotions and feelings, while providing the reader with fascinating and new information on a woman who sought and found her own identity and agency. Mary Hayden must be considered a central figure in the formation of twentieth century Ireland just as much as any military or political figure.