Writer and Activist
Rosamond Jacob was born in Waterford on 13th October 1888 to lapsed Quaker parents, Lewis Jacob and Henrietta Harvey, where she lived until 1920.
She was a lifelong activist for suffragist, republican and socialist causes and a writer of fiction. She had five published novels, the first, Callaghan, published in 1920 under the pseudonym F. Winthrop.
Along with her brother Tom, Jacob was a member of Sinn Féin from 1905 and later Fianna Fáil. She was also a member of Cumann na mBan, the Gaelic League and the Irish Women's Franchise League.
She opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and was especially involved in left-wing and republican organisations in the 1920s and 1930s. She was imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail during the Irish Civil War.
In 1931 she travelled to Russia as a delegate of the Irish Friends of Soviet Russia. She was involved in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and later in the Irish Housewives Association.
In the 1920s and 1930s she was involved in a relationship with fellow republican Frank Ryan. She played a leading role in the political campaign to secure Ryan’s freedom from Nationalist Spain, and later worked to defend his reputation after news of his death in Nazi Germany became known.
She lived in the Rathmines area of Dublin from at least 1942, firstly in Belgrave Square. From 1950 she shared a house with her friend Lucy Kingston at 17 Charleville Road.
Jacob died in 1960.
Rosamond Jacob kept a diary almost all of her life, and there are 171 of these diaries among her literary and political papers held in the National Library of Ireland.
For further reading see:
http://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhibit/web/Display/article/382/20/Waterfords_Revolutionary_Women_19161922_Rosamond_Jacob.html
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