This collection includes the papers of Mabel FitzGerald (nee McConnell), containing personal and political material. Includes information on her education, employment (including secretarial work for George Bernard Shaw and George Moore) and on her growing interest in women's suffrage, Sinn Féin and the Irish language movement. For example, a letter from Geraldine Lennox, Women's Social and Political Union, regarding a box for Irish women at the Albert Hall for the 'great meeting' (1910), and Sinn Fein membership booklet; also provides details of her courtship and marriage to Desmond Fitzgerald, of the political situation in Ireland 1915-1916, her involvement in Cumann na mBan and the Easter Rising, correspondence on Desmond's imprisonment, and with him in prison, 1918-1919 and 1921; family correspondence 1916-1917 with discussion of domestic and political matters, correspondence with George Bernard Shaw on personal and political matters. Also information on Mabel's political views, which diverged from those of Desmond, for example, (to Mrs Gavan Duffy, 1927) 'If you believed that I said I helped Desmond to go to the Imperial Conference, knowing my Republican principles, you must believe me pretty vile'. Also information on general elections 1944 and 1950 and her own changed political views: 'Finally the state of Europe has convinced me that it was folly to try to stand alone as a separate Republic' (to George Bernard Shaw, 1944).

Family papers contain correspondence of Mary Anne FitzGerald (1927), Margaret McConnell (1931-1956), Elizabeth Vesey (1954-1957), Memi Beatrice Lee (1942-1957) and letters to Mabel Fitzgerald from various correspondents.

Desmond FitzGerald's papers contain correspondence between Desmond and Mabel FitzGerald 1915-1945 on personal and political matters. Family correspondence includes correspondence between Desmond and his mother, Mary Anne FitzGerald, aunts Fanny and Kate Scollan, mother-in-law Margaret McConnell, and sister Kate FitzGerald, as well as Mabel.
This collection includes much other material relating to women arising out of FitzGerald's posts as Director of Publicity for the Dail, Minister for External Affairs, and Minister for Defence: for example, copy of a statement (1921) from K[ate] O'Callaghan on the murder of her husband, copy of letter from Hanna Sheehy Skeffington in New York on Muriel McSwiney's behaviour in America, requesting that she be recalled by de Valera, Austin Stack or Mary MacSwiney; correspondence of Molly O'Brien, Irish Emissary in Spain with Erskine Childers (1921) on Spanish domestic politics and Anglo-Spanish relations; letter in Irish from Gobnait Ní Bruadair [Albinia Broderick] (1921) on the political situation.

Copy statement from Miss Maura Moran, Enniscorthy on the arrest at Enniscorthy station of family members accompanying the body of her murdered brother from Dublin; copy report from Waterford on the murder of a 73-year-old woman, Mrs Moloney, by a party of police and military (1921); documentation relating to the arrest and hunger strike of Mary MacSwiney, Maud Gonne McBride, Mrs O'Callaghan, Annie O'Neill, Kitty Costello and Nellie O'Ryan, in Kilmainham Female Prison (1923). Other correspondents include Alice Stopford Green, Anne O'Hare McCormick, Mrs Marion O'Malley, Mrs Sydney Parry, Stella Miles Franklin, Helene Valarney, Moya Llewelyn Davies, Bridie O'Higgins, Edith Booth and Maire Comerford.

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Produced for consultation in microform. 

Photographs (P80/PH) available online at the UCD Digital Library.

Descriptive list available here.