Maud Gonne by Trish Ferguson, a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Liverpool Hope University, highlights Gonne's role in the political upheaval and change in Ireland from the late nineteenth through to the mid twentieth centuries. Ferguson's work is an attempt to rehabilitate Gonne from a narrative that has developed around her which is almost exclusively concerned with her relationship with poet W. B. Yeats. That narrative revolves around Gonne being the muse behind much of his poetry, that she was his unrequited love and concludes with his final disillusionment but lingering affection for her. Gonne herself has little agency in this version of events and she becomes solely the female object of obsession for the male poet. Ferguson takes issue with this ‘reductive approach’ and instead presents the reader with a life dedicated to Irish nationalist and republican activism.

The daughter of a British army officer serving in Ireland, the young Maud Gonne gave up a life in high society for the role of agitator and propagandist. Ferguson notes that it was safer for Gonne to write and agitate in France, where she spent much of her life, away from the British police, and that her writings on injustices in Ireland were often intended for French audiences. Gonne understood the value of making a point of reference or emotional connection with her audience and would often liken Ireland to the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which had recently been annexed following France's defeat to a Prussian-led Germany in 1870–71. It was not unusual for Gonne to comment or indeed become involved in the affairs of France. Ferguson shows that in 1892, the ‘Irish Joan of Arc’, as Gonne was known in France, wrote ‘May France remain great in order, because of the weight of its generous efforts, to influence the destinies of the world’. The author does not attempt to analyse or contextualise such remarks. It is hard to read ‘remain great’ as anything else than a celebration of France's then colonial power. This one example is perhaps indicative of an unwillingness seen throughout, on the part of the author, to consider some of the more unpleasant implications of Gonne's complicated life.

The book is a thematic biography of Gonne, and is primarily concerned with her writings and work for the Irish nationalist/republican cause but this should not be at the expense of providing some understanding of the international circles and world in which she operated. Gonne was a close associate of French journalist and politician Lucien Millevoye and by extension the leading late nineteenth-century French politician, General Ernest Boulanger. Ferguson writes that Millevoye had promised to help free Ireland, and in return Gonne promised to help free Alsace and Lorraine. Millevoye and Boulanger are presented in this volume entirely as nationalists wanting to free Alsace and Lorraine, and that this nationalism extended to sympathy with the cause of Ireland. Millevoye was certainly sympathetic to Ireland but the political movement which he espoused, led by Boulanger, was also more right wing, pro-Church, reactionary and pro-military than even the regime of the recently-deposed Napoleon III. Boulanger was also a monarchist and opposed to the ideals of the French Revolution, and his politics were in fact a major inspiration behind the Vichy regime in the Second World War. In this volume these details which reveal much about Gonne's politics are left out. This is unusual considering the aim of this book is specifically to highlight Gonne's political contribution and philosophy.

There is a need for further investigation and analysis elsewhere. Ferguson writes that Gonne was entrusted to deliver to St Petersburg the proposals for a prospective treaty between France and Russia. Gonne seems to have attempted to visit Russia with messages from French right-wingers for Russian officials or clerics, but the idea of her carrying a prospective treaty between two sovereign governments is hard to accept uncritically. The issue is that Ferguson relies largely on Gonne's own version of these events and takes them largely at face value.

The book ends by noting Gonne's belief that communism was the opposite of Christ's teaching and that Nazism was potentially beneficial to Irish republicanism. The only context given for these ideas is Francis Stuart's belief that they came not out of Gonne being cruel but from a tendency for her to be fanatical and to go to extremes. However, perhaps the fact that Maud Gonne was openly anti-Semitic and pro-German during the Second World War might also help explain these views and even account for her earlier links to the French far right.

Gonne's activities in Ireland, are presented in a chronologically confusing fashion. In a description of her work promoting the plight of evicted tenants in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the narrative suddenly, and without any explanation, switches to her indictment of the Free State government's treatment of republican prisoners in the Civil War of 1922–3. It then reverts back to Gonne's activities in the early 1900s. The book also discusses her attempts to promote the status of her husband, John MacBride, in his election campaign for a seat in parliament for South Mayo in 1900. In the description of this election the narrative then shifts, within the same paragraph, to Gonne's indictment of the Irish Parliamentary Party (I.P.P.) for encouraging Irish men to fight and die in France and Belgium. The fact that Gonne's indictment of the I.P.P. for encouraging Irish men to join the British army occurred fifteen years later and in the context of the First World War is not mentioned; the reader would be forgiven for thinking that Irish men were fighting and dying in France and Belgium in 1900.

The section on Gonne's arrest in connection with of the German plot in 1918 concludes with another unexplained indictment of the Free State by Gonne. The election of 1918 is skipped, as is the War of Independence and we go directly from 1918 into Gonne's rejection of the Treaty of 1921 and details on Gonne's work for the anti-Treaty cause in the Civil War. However, in this section we are then given an unexplained reference to her earlier work for Desmond FitzGerald and Erskine Childers in the Dáil's Department of Publicity between 1919 and 1921. Following on from a description of her work on the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War the narrative then goes back to June 1922, before the outbreak of war, and Gonne accepting a mission from FitzGerald, then a senior minister in the provisional government of the Irish Free State. Specifically, Gonne agreed to go to Paris to publicise the plight of Catholics in Northern Ireland. Again, no context is given; why, if she was so viciously anti-Treaty, did she agree to work with FitzGerald, when he was already a hate figure on the anti-Treaty side?

It seems a pity that this incident in particular was not investigated more thoroughly as more details could reveal much about Gonne. Gonne appears to have been deeply entrenched in her views but also seems to have been willing to work and associate, throughout her life, with people of different political persuasions. FitzGerald in 1922 seems to have been a case in point. This book explores the themes of Gonne's life and the absence of a detailed discussion of her personal life and cultural output works well in this context, but this should not be at the expense of clarity. It should be borne in mind that this book series is intended for a general readership, who may not be entirely familiar with the course of events. Some readers might be forgiven for thinking that FitzGerald was a leading figure on the anti-Treaty side.

Mary McAuliffe's biography of Margaret Skinnider contains substantiated, detailed and authoritative prose, and is complemented by a detailed bibliography, clear footnotes and the addition of an excellent series of photos. McAuliffe, a lecturer in gender studies at University College Dublin who specialises in Irish women's and gender history, provides a well-rounded biography and analysis of Skinnider. Skinnider's remarkable life involved revolutionary suffragist agitation, socialist activism, involvement in revolutionary violence, and transnational propaganda, in addition to being a significant organiser for the anti-Treaty I.R.A. followed by a long career in teaching and in trade union activism.

McAuliffe's scholarship is generous and constantly cites the work of other historians and is never too narrowly focused on Skinnider, providing details on the organisations and other individuals with whom she collaborated. Indeed, following on from the 1916 Rising the book is almost as much a biography of Skinnider's partner, Nora O'Keeffe. The book is also the product of painstaking primary research and analysis together with the effective use of the most recently made available sources on Irish revolutionary history. One of the strengths of the book is the broadness of its scope through fascinating coverage of Skinnider's early involvement in physical force suffragist action in her native Glasgow before the First World War, through to a detailed exploration of her work with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation from the 1930s to the 1950s.

McAuliffe highlights how female activists did much to revolutionise gender norms, noting that through wearing men's clothes in both conflict and espionage Skinnider subverted traditional gender stereotypes by adopting the role of the soldier which was seen as an exclusively male occupation. She shows how female activists subverted norms but also exploited stereotypes. Skinnider was a courier between rebel positions during the Easter Rising, and McAuliffe shows that Skinnider understood that she could carry out such a role as British soldiers and police simply would not have believed that a woman could be involved in the Rising, let alone be entrusted with crucial messages.

The book crucially demonstrates that Skinnider's revolution did not finish in 1923 and throughout her post-revolutionary years she sought to improve the place of women in Irish life, the rights of workers and of her students. Skinnider's nationalism or republicanism were driven by a desire to improve the welfare of the people of Ireland and was never too dogmatic, though she did join Clann na Poblachta in the 1950s. McAuliffe mentions the important work of Dr Brigid Lyons as the first doctor in the Free State army, which leads to one final point. This reviewer cannot help but notice that all of the figures from the revolutionary period covered in this series took the anti-Treaty side. Surely a pro-Treaty figure like Lyons, who made an enormous contribution to medicine in Ireland, deserves a biography in this series. This could also be extended to other figures in Irish history who have made distinct and original contributions to Irish life but who are perhaps now underacknowledged; Owen Sheehy Skeffington, who we meet as a young man in this volume, is case in point.