Modern Irish women are outspoken on the issues that rouse their passion - love and sex, marriage and divorce, abortion and adoption. In this they revert to earlier times, earlier ways, though there have always been rebels against whatever was the contemporary conformity. This book celebrates the vast range of their thought and activity, their spirituality and materialism.

The women who appear in these pages are both well-known and unknown, real and invented. They include, for instance, the fiery Elizabeth Fitzgerald who defended her castle so successfully, and Granuaile, the pirate queen from Galway.

The editors have drawn freely upon translations of the mythological tales and later Irish poems, upon letters, biographies, and newspapers as well as prose and poetry, plays, recordings and songs, in order to present a multilayered view of a subject never before treated in this way.

Ireland's Women includes the writings of Julia O'Faolain, Edna O'Brien, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, William Trevor, and many others - a superbly sympathetic selection that conveys fresh insights into the varied and vital experience of Irish women.