Alice Milligan and the Irish cultural revival

Catherine Morris

'A profound and moving analysis of one of the greatest inventors of modern Ireland, this account of Alice Milligan itself displays those qualities of intellectual versatility and imaginative audacity which ennobled her life through its many astonishing phases.' – Declan Kiberd

This book is the first study to explore the life and work of Alice Milligan (1866–­1953). A prolific writer for over six decades, she published her work in a range of genres (including poetry, short stories, novels, travelogues, biography, plays, journalism, letters, and memoirs). From 1891 to the 1940s, she founded a series of cultural, feminist, commemorative and political organizations that put the north on the map of the Irish Cultural Revival and provided a new resonance to Irish visual culture. This book not only reclaims an unjustly forgotten Irish cultural and political activist during this foundational era in modern Ireland, but also provides new ways of interpreting the Irish Cultural Revival itself.

Dr Catherine Morris is a writer and curator. She is an Honourary Fellow of the Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. A graduate of Cambridge University, she has served as both the Director of the Museum of Cambridge and as Senior Prospect Research Analyst for the University. She was curatorial advisor on the IMMA exhibition El Lissitzky: the Artists and State which featured Alice Milligan's drama work and was a contributor to Tate Britain’s British Folk Art exhibition in 2014. As Cultural Coordinator for Trinity College Dublin and National Library of Ireland, she establishing new partnerships between third level education and the arts in Ireland. Her exhibition The Irish Cultural Revival 1891- 1916 at the National Library of Ireland was opened by Fiona Shaw (2010). In 2012, she gifted her research archive to Omagh Public Library.