Alice Milligan

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Milligan, Alice (1866-1953), poet and dramatist. Born in Omagh, she was educated at Methodist College, Belfast, and London University, returning to lecture on Irish history for the Gaelic League. She edited The Shan Van Vocht (1896-9) with Ethna Carbery, and wrote some early heroic plays for the Irish Literary Theatre [see Abbey Theatre], The Last of the Fianna (1900) and The Daughter of Donagh (1902). Her poetry collection Hero Lays (1908) was seen as a clarion call to literary nationalism.

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Alice Milligan (1865–1953) was an Irish nationalist poet and writer, active in the Gaelic League.

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Life

She was born and raised a Protestant in Gortmore, near Omagh, County Tyrone. Milligan's father was the writer Seaton Milligan, antiquary and member of the RIA. Alice was one of eleven children and from 1877 to 1887 attended Methodist College, Belfast, after which she completed a teacher-training course. Together with her father she wrote a political travelogue of the north of Ireland in 1888, Glimpses of Erin. She wrote her first novel, A Royal Democrat, in 1890.[1]

After the death of Parnell she became an ardent nationalist. In 1894 with Jenny Armour she founded branches of the Irish Women's Association in Belfast and other places, and became its first president. With Ethna Carbery she founded two nationalist publications in the 1890s, The Northern Patriot, and later The Shan Van Vocht, a monthly literary magazine published in Belfast from 1896 to 1899.[1]

She was a figure of the Irish literary revival, and a close associate of Douglas Hyde. She was also 'on first-name terms' with WB Yeats, James Connolly and Roger Casement. Tomas MacDonagh reputedly described her as 'the best Irish poet of his generation'.[2]

Works

  • Hero Lays (1908)
  • We Sang for Ireland: Poems of Ethna Carbery, Seumas MacManus, Alice Milligan (1950) (1950)
  • Poems (1954)
  • Harper of the Only God: Selected poems by Alice Milligan (1993), edited by Sheila Turner Johnston

References

  1. ^ a b RIA Dictionary of National Biography, 2009
  2. ^ McClements, Freya (18 November 2010). "Omagh's hidden cultural 'heroine'". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11785653. Retrieved 19 November 2010. 

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