For the most up-to-date consideration of Macardle’s life and work, see Leeann Lane’s new biography Dorothy Macardle, published by UCD Press in 2019.

Dorothy Macardle’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography here.

In 2018, Kilmainham Gaol held an exhibition entitled Unsurrendered Spirits: The Prison Writings of Dorothy Macardle from 17th April 2018 to 30 September 2018) on the work of Dorothy Macardle which you can read more about here.

Macardle’s Kilmainham prison diaries and other materials are held in the UCD Archives and can be found in the UCDA P150/1658 Papers of Éamonn De Valera.

Works by Dorothy Macardle

As Macardle’s works remain under copyright, below is a list of links to her a selection of her works available in the National Library of Ireland.

Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland. Dublin: Emton Press, 1924. Republished by Dublin-based, Swan River Press in 2016.

Tragedies of Kerry, 1922-23. Emton Press: Dublin, 1924.

The Seed Was Kind. London: Peter Davies, 1944.

Uneasy Freehold. [S.l.]: Davies, 1944. (Republished by Dublin’s Tramp Press under the original U.S. title, The Uninvited, in 2015.)

Without Fanfares: Some Reflections on the Republic of Eire. Dublin: M.H. Gill, 1946.

The Irish Republic: a Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Partitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916-1923. London: Gollancz, 1937.

The Unforeseen. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Company, 1946. Republished in 2017 by Dublin’s Tramp Press.

Macardle, Dorothy, and Kalman Landau. Children of Europe: A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries; Their War-time Experiences, Their Reactions, and Their Needs, With a Note On Germany. London: Gollanez, 1949.

Dark Enchantment. [S.l.]: P. Davies, 1953. Republished in 2019 by Dublin’s Tramp Press.

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Podcast: Listen back to this recent fascinating discussion about Dorothy Macardle between National Library of Ireland’s Poet in Residence Dr. Julie Morrissy and author, activist and academic Dr. Susan Cahill. (2021)

The Dorothy Macardle Archive and Performance Project by Sharon Mc Ardle and Declan Gorman (2018 – current).

A trailer for the very successful 1944 film adaptation of The Uninvited (the US title of Macardle’s Uneasy Freehold) can be viewed here.

Further Reading

Aiken, Síobhra. ‘The Women’s Weapon’: Reclaiming the Hunger Strike in the Fiction of Dorothy Macardle, Máiréad Ní Ghráda and Máirín Cregan, Journal of War & Culture Studies, 14:1, (89-109): 2021. DOI: 10.1080/17526272.2021.1873535.

Aiken, Síobhra. Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War. Kildare, Irish Academic Press, 2022. (94- 101).

Aiken, Síobhra. “The Silence and the Silence Breakers of the Irish Civil War, 1922–2022.” Éire-Ireland, vol. 57 no. 1, 2022, p. 260-288. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/eir.2022.0012.

Brady, Deirdre. Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933-1958). Liverpool, Liverpool University Press. 2021.

Ellis, Peter Berresford. “A Reflection of Ghosts: The Life of Dorothy Macardle.” The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, no. 7, Swan River Press, 2016, pp. 63–81, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48536112.

Heafey, Caroline B. “Rediscovering Dorothy Macardle: An Interview with Caroline B. Heafey,” Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2020, https://scholarship.shu.edu/ciiis/vol2/iss1/3

Lane, Leeann. “Constructions of civil war masculinities in the writings of Dorothy Macardle”, Irish Studies Review, 29:2. 243-256, 2021.  DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2021.1914921

Leeney, Cathy. “The Space Outside: Images of Women in Plays by Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle.” Women in Irish Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2007. 55-68.

Leeney, Cathy. Irish Women Playwrights, 1900-1939: Gender and Violence on Stage. Vol. 9, Peter Lang, New York; Oxford: 2010.

Malone, Irina Ruppo. “Spectral History: The Ghost Stories of Dorothy Macardle.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Vol. 9 No. 1, (2011): 95-109. Project Muse, DOI:10.1353/pan.2011.0000

McCoole, Sinéad. No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900–1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Meaney, Gerardine. Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change. New York and Oxon. Routledge. 2010.

Meaney, Gerardine. “Identity and Opposition: Women’s Writing, 1890-1960.” The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5: Women’s Writing and Traditions. Eds. Angela Bourke. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 976-981.

Molidor, Jennifer. “Dying for Ireland: Violence, Silence, and Sacrifice in Dorothy Macardle’s Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924)” New Hibernia Review 12.4 (2008): 43-61 DOI:10.1353/nhr.0.0047

O’Dowd, Ciara. “Lisa Fitzpatrick and Shonagh Hill, eds., Plays by Women in Ireland (1926–33): Feminist Theatres of Freedom and Resistance: Distinguished Villa; The Woman; Youth’s the Season; Witch’s Brew; Bluebeard.” (2023): 204-207.

Ogliari, Elena. “Breaking the Silence: The Irish Civil War in the Short Stories by Dorothy Macardle.” University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series 12.2 (2022): 5-19.

Palko, Abigail L. “Queer Seductions of the Maternal in Dorothy Macardle’s Earth-bound“. Irish University Review, Volume 46 Issue 2, Page 287-308, Available Online Oct 2016. https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2016.0228

Palko, Abigail . “From The Uninvited to The Visitor: The Post-Independence Dilemma Faced by Irish Women Writers.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2010), pp. 1-34.

Short, Constance. “Dorothy Macardle—Revolutionary and Writer.” Books Ireland, No. 382, Wordwell Ltd., 2018, pp. 18–19.

Smith, Nadia Claire. Dorothy Macardle: A Life. Dublin: Woodfield Press, 2007.

Smith, Nadia Claire. “From Dundalk to Dublin: Dorothy Macardle’s Narrative Journey on Radio Éireann.” The Irish Review, No. 42, Summer, Cork University Press, 2010, pp. 27–42.

Featured Image: Group photograph of members of the Women Writers’ Club with Dorothy Macardle (Front Row, Second from the Right). Reproduced by kind permission of UCD-OFM Partnership. UCD Archives. P150/PH/3664/4.