Constance Markievicz (1868-1927) was an Irish nationalist, labor activist, and feminist, who fought against the British in the 1916 Easter Rising but, as a diehard republican, later refused to compromise in the creation of the Irish Free State.

The Irish Rebellion of 1916-22 was inspired chiefly by Catholic revolutionaries seeking to throw off the yoke of a centuries-old British domination, but the idea of Irish independence attracted a wide variety of enthusiasts and idealists. None was a stranger, or a more unlikely candidate for the role of Irish freedom-fighter than Constance Markievicz, a rich, privileged Protestant woman, who had once dabbled in art, theater, and feminism but who spent the later years of her life as a guerrilla fighter, parliamentarian, prisoner, and fugitive.

Constance was born in 1868 to the Gore-Booth family, one of the largest landowning families in County Sligo on the Irish west coast. Her wealthy Protestant family...