The Yeats-Gonne Series
A Life Before
A Life Before
Book One: 1886-1889 (ON PREORDER)
The story of Maud Gonne’s coming-of-age.
Who was Maud Gonne before she famously became ‘the troubling’ of W.B. Yeats life?
Born into privilege but betrayed by her inheritance, this English heiress has grown up in a world of military service and repeated displacement. Now, determined to live at full blaze, she meets the magnetic Lucien Millevoye and breaks every rule to follow his lead and find a useful role in life.
But challenging convention isn’t easy, not even for this most clever, beautiful, and gifted young woman. And when the meets the young poet, W. B. Yeats, whose poetic gaze cast her as symbol, she begins to count the cost of the life she has chosen.
Told in the magical voice of narrator Rosy Cross, ‘the oldest woman in Ireland’, and traversing Paris salons, London stages and the charged streets of 1880s Dublin, this true-life story of first love and first power is a portrait of an unforgettable woman at the crossroads of empire and independence.
Now on preorder. Purchase here to receive this book in advance of launch. Pre-orders only available on this website.
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Description
Must the sins of the fathers must be purged by the daughters?
Who was Maud Gonne before she became the legend who would inspire poetry and agitate politics? Born into privilege but betrayed by her inheritance, she has grown up in a world of military service and repeated displacement. Now, grief at the death of her adored father has led her to the bohemian salons of France--a country shimmering with new thoughts on art, politics, and the occult.
There she meets Lucien Millevoye, a married, reactionary firebrand sixteen years her senior, whose vision for his homeland ignites her own restless spirit. Breaking every rule of class and gender, the English heiress chooses passion and purpose over convention, and discovers in Ireland’s struggle for freedom a reflection of her own.
But before she can become the voice and face of a nation in search of itself, Gonne must reckon with the scandal and suffering she has ignited. Seeking out the young Irish writer W.B. Yeats, she finds a friend whose poetic gaze casts her in myth, but whose comforting philosophy makes her question every choice she's made.
Caught between the pull of the personal and the call of the eternal, Maud Gonne now faces an extraordinary choice.
Told in the magical voice of narrator Rosy Cross, ‘the oldest woman in Ireland’, ‘A Life Before’ is a story of first love and first power. This intimate and epic novel navigates Paris, London, and Dublin in the turbulent 1880s, through the awakening of one multi-faceted woman at the crossroads of empire and independence.
Now available for preorder. Purchase above to receive your copy before the official 2026 launch.