Excerpt from Illustrious Irishwomen, Vol. 1 of 2: Being Memoirs of Some of the Most Noted Irishwomen From the Earliest Ages to the Present Century In her beauty and in her obscurity, Ireland has been called, and not inappropriately, "the Cinderella of the Empire." Her children, when opportunity offers, possess the capabilities of achieving much that is praiseworthy; for Nature has never been niggard of her physical and intellectual gifts to the Irish race; and to preserve in a collected form the names and achievements of some of the more gifted daughters of Erin, has been the silent patriotism of my life. I am painfully aware of the many deficiencies to be found in these volumes; but I would beg the indulgence of the public, on the plea that this is the first time a work of this kind - dealing solely with memoirs of Irishwomen - has been attempted. It had been my original intention to have included notices of some living Irishwomen, whose lives and labours entitle them to a place in a work of this nature; but, acting upon the advice of those more qualified to judge, have refrained from doing so. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.