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Wild Irish Women
Writers, killers, nuns, patriots, artists, healers, pirates, politicians, entertainers, saints, courtesans, leaders, revolutionaries, lovers, warriors, witches, record-breakers, and eccentrics are among the eclectic roster of Irishwomen resurrected from the dustbins of history by this "rollicking read" (according to Books Ireland ).
In times when women were expected to marry and have children, they traveled the world and sought out adventures. In times when women were expected to be seen and not heard, they spoke out against oppression and used every creative means available to express their ideas and beliefs. Editor and writer Marian Broderick provides us with a series of lively portraits of seventy-five unorthodox Irishwomen. In these pages you will meet women you will never Maria Edworth, Lady Jane Wilde, Lady Augusta Gregory, Peig Sayers, Nora Barnacle, Kitty Kiernan, Anne Bonny, Anne Devlin, Mother Jones, Countess Constance Markievicz, Hanna Sheey Skeffington, Fanny and Anna Parnell, Maud Gonne, St. Brighid, Margaret Leeson, Lady Betty, Queen Maeve of Connacht, Molly Brown, Kathleen Behan, Lola Monez, Daisy Bates, Greer Garson, Lilly and Lolly Yeats, and many more.
Co-published with the O'Brien Press, Dublin
Wisconsin edition is for sale only in the U.S.A., it's territories and dependencies, and Canada.
In times when women were expected to marry and have children, they traveled the world and sought out adventures. In times when women were expected to be seen and not heard, they spoke out against oppression and used every creative means available to express their ideas and beliefs. Editor and writer Marian Broderick provides us with a series of lively portraits of seventy-five unorthodox Irishwomen. In these pages you will meet women you will never Maria Edworth, Lady Jane Wilde, Lady Augusta Gregory, Peig Sayers, Nora Barnacle, Kitty Kiernan, Anne Bonny, Anne Devlin, Mother Jones, Countess Constance Markievicz, Hanna Sheey Skeffington, Fanny and Anna Parnell, Maud Gonne, St. Brighid, Margaret Leeson, Lady Betty, Queen Maeve of Connacht, Molly Brown, Kathleen Behan, Lola Monez, Daisy Bates, Greer Garson, Lilly and Lolly Yeats, and many more.
Co-published with the O'Brien Press, Dublin
Wisconsin edition is for sale only in the U.S.A., it's territories and dependencies, and Canada.
348 pages, Paperback
First published September 11, 2001
About the author
Marian Broderick
19 books3 followersMarian Broderick is a freelance editor and a writer. Marian lives and works in London. Her parents are Irish and therefore all her childhood summers were spent in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
March 28, 2018
I received this book from O'Brien Press in exchange for an honest review.
Wild Irish Women is a wonderful collection of women who are Irish, or born of Irish parents, that have some way or another made a mark in history.There were so many women in this I have never heard of it - I think because Ireland is so small, and let's be honest, we don't have a great history of treating women with respect it;s easy to just focus on the very, very small group of women whose names have appeared sparsely in history books amongst the many, many men (Countess Markievicz, Maude Gonne, Grace O'Malley).
I thought this book was written and edited really, really well. Some of the women's chapters were longer than others which would happen in any sort of non-fiction collection, but each story whether it was 8 pages or 2 pages long grabbed my attention and kept it. The women were also grouped in manners of their interests - from writers to artists, to revolutionaries and politicians.
I also really liked that this did have some images and photographs of the women but the images were only in two sections of the book, and didn't take the attention away from the stories. I think this would be a really good book for people who may be tired of reading the picture books that are popular now for feminists and rebel women in history, and want to focus more on words rather than the pretty illustrations.
A wonderful book and one I would recommend to all Irish people, and anyone that is just interested in women that made a mark but aren't often spoken about.
Wild Irish Women is a wonderful collection of women who are Irish, or born of Irish parents, that have some way or another made a mark in history.There were so many women in this I have never heard of it - I think because Ireland is so small, and let's be honest, we don't have a great history of treating women with respect it;s easy to just focus on the very, very small group of women whose names have appeared sparsely in history books amongst the many, many men (Countess Markievicz, Maude Gonne, Grace O'Malley).
I thought this book was written and edited really, really well. Some of the women's chapters were longer than others which would happen in any sort of non-fiction collection, but each story whether it was 8 pages or 2 pages long grabbed my attention and kept it. The women were also grouped in manners of their interests - from writers to artists, to revolutionaries and politicians.
I also really liked that this did have some images and photographs of the women but the images were only in two sections of the book, and didn't take the attention away from the stories. I think this would be a really good book for people who may be tired of reading the picture books that are popular now for feminists and rebel women in history, and want to focus more on words rather than the pretty illustrations.
A wonderful book and one I would recommend to all Irish people, and anyone that is just interested in women that made a mark but aren't often spoken about.
July 18, 2017
I started reading this June 3, 2016. It is now July 17, 2017. Oops.
This book has so much epic girl power, but it was a lot. A lot of facts. A lot of writing. A lot of history. I just wanted lots and lots of girl power, which I got, but it was just...I got really bored (well, I mean, clearly - it took me a year to finish this) while I was digging through the cool bits.
Um, but can we just take a moment of silence for my epic perseverance here? A YEAR. YAYAYAYAY. Now, off to find my next yearly read!
This book has so much epic girl power, but it was a lot. A lot of facts. A lot of writing. A lot of history. I just wanted lots and lots of girl power, which I got, but it was just...I got really bored (well, I mean, clearly - it took me a year to finish this) while I was digging through the cool bits.
Um, but can we just take a moment of silence for my epic perseverance here? A YEAR. YAYAYAYAY. Now, off to find my next yearly read!
September 5, 2017
Loved, loved, loved this book.
The Irish have a wildly interesting past and women have had a leading role in it; this book is perfect as a first approach to understanding it.
It is pretty much an introduction to each story but very well written. It deserves to be better known.
Go read it!
The Irish have a wildly interesting past and women have had a leading role in it; this book is perfect as a first approach to understanding it.
It is pretty much an introduction to each story but very well written. It deserves to be better known.
Go read it!
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
January 18, 2021I will come back to it!! I just need the motivation lol.
September 22, 2018
Very interesting life histories that are spread over the long history of Ireland itself!
April 9, 2021
I'd love to score this more highly, but unfortunately it just didn't work for me. There are some really interesting stories in here, some more interesting than others, but all are lacking context - I just don't think the short form bio format has worked particularly well here.
The lack of context means there is a lot of knowledge assumed - about what was 'acceptable' for women at different time points, in different countries, and social and political history for many periods was also required in order to really appreciate what made some of these women so exceptional. I also wasn't a huge fan of the writing style in places. A shame, as the idea had a lot of merit - maybe fewer, more detailed biographies would have been better.
The lack of context means there is a lot of knowledge assumed - about what was 'acceptable' for women at different time points, in different countries, and social and political history for many periods was also required in order to really appreciate what made some of these women so exceptional. I also wasn't a huge fan of the writing style in places. A shame, as the idea had a lot of merit - maybe fewer, more detailed biographies would have been better.
January 24, 2022
Loved this book from start to finish. The mini-essay style of writing made this book not only easy to read, but easy to dip in and out as you please. I did find it a bit heavy on the women’s relationships to other male Irish visionaries and famous people, and not a huge amount of focus on the women themselves as a result. However, a great read especially for those wanting to expand their knowledge on Irish history.
February 24, 2016
A nice interesting little book. Not a lot of detail went into certain women's entries and too much detail into others and overall not the best written. However, it was fun, easy to read and a great book to just dip in and out of.
3 / 5
3 / 5
March 2, 2018
Living in Cork, this book is practically thrown at anyone interested in feminism or history.
For a good reason - this is such an impressive collection of the lives of Irish women - from the gifted Gaelic story teller Peig Sayers who lived the harsh life of a farmer's wife on an island in the west - to queens and clan leaders.
It covers a woman burned by her husband who suspected she was a changeling, women who took an active part in Ireland's struggle for independence and artists.
I feel you need to take a few breaks while reading this book. As the scope is so wide and there are so many women included, reading it all in one go would become boring after a while and, I suspect, you'd forget one life as soon as you read the next. So I only ever read a couple of lives and then put the book aside.
At the end of it, I gained some insight into Irish history and the part women played in Ireland.
For a good reason - this is such an impressive collection of the lives of Irish women - from the gifted Gaelic story teller Peig Sayers who lived the harsh life of a farmer's wife on an island in the west - to queens and clan leaders.
It covers a woman burned by her husband who suspected she was a changeling, women who took an active part in Ireland's struggle for independence and artists.
I feel you need to take a few breaks while reading this book. As the scope is so wide and there are so many women included, reading it all in one go would become boring after a while and, I suspect, you'd forget one life as soon as you read the next. So I only ever read a couple of lives and then put the book aside.
At the end of it, I gained some insight into Irish history and the part women played in Ireland.
February 26, 2024
A decent collection of short-form bios of some of Ireland’s most remarkable women throughout history. Some will be more well-known to readers than others and there were some very interesting stories I could hardly believe weren’t more well-known.
Because this book covers so many women’s lives and groups them according to what they dedicated their lives to (e.g. writing, acting, politics, etc), some very similar stories did get repetitious and started bleeding into each other to the point where I was struggling to keep everything straight in my head. As a result, this took me much longer to read than I was anticipating.
I’m also not sure the short-form bio format worked for me as it sometimes felt like a dry recital of facts that didn’t go beyond the surface level as there were so many women to cover in one book. With that said, it was an interesting read and definitely brought women to my attention whose achievements I hadn’t previously been aware of.
Because this book covers so many women’s lives and groups them according to what they dedicated their lives to (e.g. writing, acting, politics, etc), some very similar stories did get repetitious and started bleeding into each other to the point where I was struggling to keep everything straight in my head. As a result, this took me much longer to read than I was anticipating.
I’m also not sure the short-form bio format worked for me as it sometimes felt like a dry recital of facts that didn’t go beyond the surface level as there were so many women to cover in one book. With that said, it was an interesting read and definitely brought women to my attention whose achievements I hadn’t previously been aware of.
December 11, 2017
The women and their lives featured here were fantastically interesting, but the author's dry style didn't bring them to life as I had hoped. I did like how she grouped their exploits by focus areas rather than using a chronological (or some other) approach. But she could have done a better job of weaving the chapters together, since so many of these ladies' stories connected with one another. Instead, she would simply name another of her subjects as if the reader knew their significance - sometimes these mentions occurred before the chapter featuring the aforementioned subject. I think this book would be more enjoyable as a reference, or at best the reader should consider that each chapter stands alone. I chose to read this cover to cover which may have contributed to my disappointment.
January 5, 2020
I bought this book 3 years ago and only just finished it this year! It's a great read, but I definitely recommend reading no more than 3 stories at a time, then taking a break. Otherwise, the names and exploits all blend together until you forget who's who!
And that's unfortunate, because there are some REALLY interesting women in these pages! Nearly all of them were new to me, and the author does a fantastic job of laying out their stories in easy to understand writing.
I will probably go back and re-read some of the bits, because I did not take my own advice and read through sections much too quickly!
And that's unfortunate, because there are some REALLY interesting women in these pages! Nearly all of them were new to me, and the author does a fantastic job of laying out their stories in easy to understand writing.
I will probably go back and re-read some of the bits, because I did not take my own advice and read through sections much too quickly!
December 27, 2019
This collection of short portraits of unorthodox Irish women over the centuries was so interesting. I had heard of some of the women (eg. Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, Molly Brown, Mother Jones, Catherine McAuley, Countess Markievicz, Grace O'Malley), but many others I had never heard about. They all had much to offer their country.
These mini-biographies just made me want to know more about them and their influence on the politics, social welfare and culture of Ireland. These women were way ahead of their times! What an interesting book!
These mini-biographies just made me want to know more about them and their influence on the politics, social welfare and culture of Ireland. These women were way ahead of their times! What an interesting book!
July 13, 2017
This is an interesting book about 75 women of Irish descent who either for personal gain, poverty or wanting to help people had very wild lives. So much poverty, jail time, death, starvation, and constantly moving around. Most had several spouses, children(most didn't live) and lovers. They all had very hard lives. The book would've been better if there would have been a picture by each woman's story instead of grouped together.
April 15, 2018
A truly wonderful book. Sheds light on a litany of brilliant Irish women, many of whom have been hidden from history. This book is inspiring, empowering and kick-ass. Women in Irish Society are often underrepresented so this book makes an important contribution to redressing that balance. I felt like I was walking in the shoes of giants. An inspiring read.
April 21, 2019
quite easy to read - more like a 10th grade school book. It is interesting in that it highlights the role of brave and amazing women but I do believe some extra depth may be need to make this book as outstanding as the topics it discusses.
July 13, 2022
Wild Irish
This is a book that does what I love a book to do- had me googling things like mad. I appreciate the photos and illustrations as well, helping to put a face to the name and deeds. Some of these would have interested me even if I weren't Irish.
This is a book that does what I love a book to do- had me googling things like mad. I appreciate the photos and illustrations as well, helping to put a face to the name and deeds. Some of these would have interested me even if I weren't Irish.
May 22, 2023
I’m usually a non-fiction-hater, but this was so great. Consisting of a hundred mini biographies, this book provided insight into the roles of women throughout Irish history. There were some scandals in here! Loved this - a really quick read, y’all should pick this up.
Read
July 19, 2023Superspannend und interessant, ich hab eine Menge gelernt und kannte die meisten der vorgestellten Frauen auch gar nicht bis auf Peig Sayers, Anne Bonny und Molly Brown. Ganz klare Leseempfehlung von mir.
December 5, 2024
The Irish women in this are interesting and I love hearing about women from my history. However there were a good few colonizers in this book that was disappointing to see that they were muddled in with Irish women.
June 16, 2017
A great book for summaries of these women's lives, however, sometimes it felt rushed and I wish it went into a little more detail about their significance.
December 19, 2018
Short synopsis on some fabulous Irish women.
December 17, 2019
A great read, some really excellent stories, would recommend to any leaving cert history student
April 22, 2021
I first discovered 'Wild Irish Women' a couple of months ago, while browsing through the Irish interest section in my beloved Charlie Byrne's in Galway, before the abrupt commencement of this pandemic pandemonium. I was hugely intrigued by both the invigorating title and the captivating blurb, but on that particular occasion I had decided that enough was enough, and that I was to put my habit of buying more books than I can conceivably read to rest until I'd read all of the ones I already own. However, I returned panic-stricken less than a week later, knowing that my days with my precious haunt were coming to a temporary end and that if I wanted to have any new reading material for the immediate future, I'd have to act fast. My first port of call was to track down 'Wild Irish Women', but although I searched the length and breadth of Byrne's extensive collection of codices, it was nowhere to be found. I channelled my disappointment into honing in on other books of interest, and was this time largely successful, but 'Wild Irish Women' still had not left my mind. It seemed like fate when, upon fleeing back to my childhood home for fear of not being able to see my family for many months, I found none other than the paperback in question on my parents' bookshelf. Both are aware of its existence, but spookily enough, neither can fully ascertain how it got there, nor have they ever got round to reading it. Seemingly, it was meant for me.
After suffering through the first instalment of home-based collegiate assessment, I finally gained more and more freedom to read. I started off with a few works of fiction, my preferred literary medium, but with a few behind me and a lot more time on my hands upon the eventual completion of most of my myriad of assignments and exams, I decided to give something else a shot. For me, the first remarkable feature of 'Wild Irish Women' was its division not purely by chronology, but by the professions or lifestyles of the seventy-five women discussed. I felt this was a wise decision - a dense concentration on any one period of time without pause may have proved highly tedious, with some producing far more women of note than others. In the introduction, we are told that all women accounted for in the book have met three criteria of Broderick's: firstly, each is fascinating, hence the title. Secondly, each is Irish by blood in some way, shape or form (save for Katherine Parnell, but her renowned husband Charles Stewart is the obvious acceptable reason for this exception). Finally, each woman is dead, which I suppose allows the accounts to follow a relatively simple life-death biographical style.
With vocabulary so accessible that it could be read by anyone perhaps from the early teenage years onwards, 'Wild Irish Women' would be an excellent starting point for anyone looking to develop an interest in women's studies. Owing to the sheer number of women detailed, each account is relatively short, but still fairly descriptive. Each could be used perhaps as a first stepping stone from which one may further their interest through the perusal of other, more extensive and specific literary works pertaining to any woman in particular (an extensive bibliography is included). It also provides a comprehensive overview of general Irish history over the last millennium or so. I found the accounts, on the large, to be interesting, informative, and laugh-out-loud hilarious at points. In general, it does not presume any prior knowledge of Irish history, but there are exceptions, such as names being provided with little to no context, before appearing in more detail later on in the book. My only other negative point is that at times, the accounted women were involved in the same social circle and hence a lot of the information provided in their pertinence ends up being repeated. Take for instance the likes of Countess Constance Markievicz, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Louie Bennett, Mary McSwiney and Kathleen Clarke, all of whom were nationalists who lived through and were greatly impacted by, and in some cases involved in, the fight for Irish independence. While the unique endeavours of each woman were undoubtedly highlighted in full, there were occasional monotonous, repetitive descriptions of the likes of the soup kitchens which these women dedicated a lot of their time to - highly commemorable, but really needing only one of its several allusions, methinks. Looking back, I should perhaps have taken the eleven listed sections as a hint and read this book in short bursts instead of cover-to-cover, with other books interspersed in-between, as the reading proved dense at times, but nonetheless I got through it.
Minute issues aside, this book is the best non-fiction work I've read in years, and it improved my pre-reading knowledge of a measly eight of these extraordinary women to likely never being able to forget the vast majority of them. I'll probably revisit this book but in chunks - it must be said that some of the women are far more interesting than the others - but I think I'm going to stick with fiction for another while.
After suffering through the first instalment of home-based collegiate assessment, I finally gained more and more freedom to read. I started off with a few works of fiction, my preferred literary medium, but with a few behind me and a lot more time on my hands upon the eventual completion of most of my myriad of assignments and exams, I decided to give something else a shot. For me, the first remarkable feature of 'Wild Irish Women' was its division not purely by chronology, but by the professions or lifestyles of the seventy-five women discussed. I felt this was a wise decision - a dense concentration on any one period of time without pause may have proved highly tedious, with some producing far more women of note than others. In the introduction, we are told that all women accounted for in the book have met three criteria of Broderick's: firstly, each is fascinating, hence the title. Secondly, each is Irish by blood in some way, shape or form (save for Katherine Parnell, but her renowned husband Charles Stewart is the obvious acceptable reason for this exception). Finally, each woman is dead, which I suppose allows the accounts to follow a relatively simple life-death biographical style.
With vocabulary so accessible that it could be read by anyone perhaps from the early teenage years onwards, 'Wild Irish Women' would be an excellent starting point for anyone looking to develop an interest in women's studies. Owing to the sheer number of women detailed, each account is relatively short, but still fairly descriptive. Each could be used perhaps as a first stepping stone from which one may further their interest through the perusal of other, more extensive and specific literary works pertaining to any woman in particular (an extensive bibliography is included). It also provides a comprehensive overview of general Irish history over the last millennium or so. I found the accounts, on the large, to be interesting, informative, and laugh-out-loud hilarious at points. In general, it does not presume any prior knowledge of Irish history, but there are exceptions, such as names being provided with little to no context, before appearing in more detail later on in the book. My only other negative point is that at times, the accounted women were involved in the same social circle and hence a lot of the information provided in their pertinence ends up being repeated. Take for instance the likes of Countess Constance Markievicz, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Louie Bennett, Mary McSwiney and Kathleen Clarke, all of whom were nationalists who lived through and were greatly impacted by, and in some cases involved in, the fight for Irish independence. While the unique endeavours of each woman were undoubtedly highlighted in full, there were occasional monotonous, repetitive descriptions of the likes of the soup kitchens which these women dedicated a lot of their time to - highly commemorable, but really needing only one of its several allusions, methinks. Looking back, I should perhaps have taken the eleven listed sections as a hint and read this book in short bursts instead of cover-to-cover, with other books interspersed in-between, as the reading proved dense at times, but nonetheless I got through it.
Minute issues aside, this book is the best non-fiction work I've read in years, and it improved my pre-reading knowledge of a measly eight of these extraordinary women to likely never being able to forget the vast majority of them. I'll probably revisit this book but in chunks - it must be said that some of the women are far more interesting than the others - but I think I'm going to stick with fiction for another while.
September 15, 2020
I love this book, I dip in and out all the time and always learn something new
November 23, 2020
Absolutely fascinating.
October 30, 2021
It's so dry and I can't read it anymore, it's been almost a year. The names just run together
December 12, 2022
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews