Rosamond Jacob


Rosamond Jacob was an Irish writer and activist.
She was born to lapsed Quaker parents, Lewis Jacob and Henrietta Harvey, in Waterford, where she lived until 1920. She was a lifelong activist for suffragist, republican and socialist causes and a writer of fiction. Her first novel was called Callaghan and was published in 1920.
She, along with her brother Tom, 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. She 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.

Published works