Cesca’s Diary, 1913-1916: Where Art and Nationalism Meet

Born in England into a unionist family, the artist Frances Georgiana Chenevix Trench became an ardent nationalist and quickly involved herself in the movement for Home Rule and political freedom in Dublin. Before the outbreak of the First World War, Cesca, as she was known, attended art school in Paris, where she associated with students from other small countries seeking freedom. Her passion for Ireland influenced her art, her love life, and her relations with her unionist family. Cesca’s seven manuscript journals, originally written in Irish, English, and French, have been translated and set in the context of their times by Hilary Pyle. Heavily illustrated with her portrait sketches of friends and associates in the movement, as well as examples of her oil paintings and pastels, the book is a fascinating account of a young woman in early twentieth-century Ireland.