Dorothy Macardle (1889–1958)
Author of The Uninvited
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
As a playwright, used the name Margaret Callan.
Works by Dorothy Macardle
Shakespeare, Man & Boy 5 copies
The Children's guest 1 copy
The Uninvited (abridged) 1 copy
The Uninvited 1 copy
Associated Works
Selections from Le morte d'Arthur of Thomas Malory — Editor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Macardle, Dorothy
- Legal name
- Macardle, Dorothea Marguerita Callan
- Other names
- Callan, Margaret
- Birthdate
- 1889-02-02
- Date of death
- 1958-12-23
- Burial location
- St. Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin, Ireland
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland
- Place of death
- Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland
- Places of residence
- Dundalk, Ireland (birth)
Dublin, Ireland
Drogheda, Ireland (death) - Education
- Alexandra College, Dublin, Ireland
University College Dublin - Occupations
- writer
historian
playwright
journalist
teacher
political activist - Organizations
- The Gaelic League
Sinn Féin
Fianna Fáil
The Irish Press
Irish National Council for Women
Irish Association of Civil Liberties - Short biography
- Dorothy Macardle was born in Dundalk, Ireland, to a wealthy brewing family famous for their Macardle's Ale. They moved to Dublin when she was in her teens, and she was educated at Alexandra College and University College Dublin. After graduating, she returned to Alexandra College to teach English. She was active in republican and feminist politics, and was writing plays. The first professional production of one of her plays took place in the 1910s with the Little Theatre in Dublin, founded by Daisy Bannard Cogley, who directed a production of Macardle's play Asthara in 1918. Mcardle worked as a journalist and publicist during the War of Independence and the Civil War.
When the republican movement split in 1921–1922 over the Anglo-Irish Treaty to create the Irish Free State, Macardle sided with the anti-Treaty faction and accused the new Irish government of betraying its ideals. She was arrested in 1922, and served time in both Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols.
McCardle deplored what she saw as the reduced status of women in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. Noting that the mew Constitution had dropped the commitment to guarantee equal rights and opportunities "without distinction of sex," she demanded of Eamon de Valera how anyone "with advanced views on the rights of women" could support it. She also criticized compulsory Irish language teaching in schools.
While working as a journalist with the League of Nations in the 1930s, Macardle came to feel an affinity with the plight of Czechoslovakia as it was being pressed to make territorial concessions to Nazi Germany. Believing that "Hitler's war should be everybody's war," she disagreed with de Valera's policy of Irish neutrality. She went to work for the BBC in London, worked on her fiction writing, and, at the end of World War II, campaigned for refugee children, a crisis described in her book Children of Europe (1949). In 1951 she became the first president of the Irish Society of Civil Liberties.
Macardle recounted her Civil Car experiences in Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924). She continued as a playwright for the next two decades. In her dramatic writing she used the pseudonym Margaret Callan.
Her book The Irish Republic was first published in 1937 and was well-received by criticsl Macardle was widely praised for her research, thorough documentation, range of sources, and narration of dramatic events, The book was reprinted several times, most recently in 2005. The Irish Republic was the only authoritative account of the period 1916-1926 that was widely used by de Valera and Fianna Fáil over the years. - Disambiguation notice
- As a playwright, used the name Margaret Callan.
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1940s (1)
ScaredyKIT 2020 (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 13
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 455
- Popularity
- #53,951
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 22
- ISBNs
- 23
- Languages
- 1
- Favorited
- 1
Roderick and his sister Pamela leave the hustle and bustle of modern London looking for that perfect house on the English coast. What they find is the beautiful Cliff End overlooking the sea. From their first meeting with the sweet and lovely young Stella Meredith, whose grandfather owns the house, we know there is a larger mystery here. This is a good novel that slowly unfolds as we learn of Stella's mother Mary, and the beautiful Spanish girl, Carmel, who was seduced by Stella's father.
There are more questions than answers for the brother and sister the longer they remain at Cliff End. Who is the apparition at the top of the stairway and why does a sickening cold always precede its appearance? Why are there moans of anguish coming from the room that used to be the nursery? What is the real mystery surrounding Mary's death? What about that Mimosa scent that coincides with the moaning? And why do things get more stirred up every time young Stella is there? Roderick has fallen for the sweet Stella just as the reader has and both must discover the answers.
What makes this such an excellent read is that it treats this as a straightforward story of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. It unfolds slowly as Roderick and Pamela attempt to solve this maddening riddle to an otherwise wonderful house they don't want to leave. Both the mystery and ghost story are presented in an entertaining day-to-day chronicle of life in the English countryside. Ever so gradually, the growing romance between Roderick and Stella inches its way to the center at the same time the danger to young Stella heightens.
It's fantastic that this long-out-of-print classic is now available on Kindle. The forward in the Kindle version contains a wealth of information about Macardle, her work and life. It's several pages in the Kindle and is well worth reading. The Uninvited inspired the finest film of its kind ever made, starring Ray Milland and the lovely Gail Russell. You don't want to miss either the book or the film, and now that Macardle's fine novel is back in print, you don't have to.… (more)