Suzanne R. Day

Suzanne Rouviere Day (24 April 1876 – 26 May 1964) was an Irish feminist, novelist and playwright. She founded the Munster Women's Franchise League, was one of Cork's first women poor-law guardians and served a support role in both World Wars.

Suzanne R. Day
From the cast of 1901 production of The Mikado, Cork
Born
Suzanne Rouviere Day

24 April 1876
Cork, Ireland
Died26 May 1964
London
NationalityIrish
Occupationwriter

Biography

Day was born in Cork, Ireland in 24 April 1876 to Robert and Rebecca Day. Her father Robert ran a Saddler and Ironmonger business and was a well known antiquarian and photographer.[1]

1896: Bookplate for Suzanne R. Day, designed by John Vinycomb

In 1910 she formed the local Irish Women's Franchise League branch in Cork as an activist group for women's suffrage.[2] The following year she left that group and founded the non-militant Munster Women's Franchise League. Her new interest in politics led to her winning the election of poor-law guardians the same year.[3] Her later writings reveal that she saw the Cork workhouses as an expensive self-perpetuating evil run by amateurs. This led to her first novel.[4] From 1913 to 1917 she wrote three plays for the Abbey Theatre in collaboration with Geraldine Cummins, the most successful of which was the comedy Fox and Geese (1917).[5][6]

The Battle of Verdun lasted most of 1916 and during that time Day was amongst a group from the Society of Friends who cared for the wounded. She was in France for fifteen months and she used the experience to create her 1918 book Round about Bar-le-Duc. Where the Mistral Blows was published in 1933 and describes her time in Provence in France.[3]

She worked as a member of the fire service in London during the Second World War. She lived in Cork, France and London. She was living at 47 Argyle Road, Kensington, London when she died,[5][7][8] but she died in Cromer and District Hospital on 26 May 1964.[8][3]

Criticism

The work of Suzanne Rouviere Day and Geraldine Cummins has been described as a mixture of paganism and melodrama and has been suggested as a precursor to John B. Keane.[9]

Works

Plays
  • Out of a Deep Shadow (1912)
  • Toilers (1913)[10]
  • Broken Faith (co-written with Geraldine Cummins; Abbey Theatre, 1913)
  • The Way of the World (co-written with Geraldine Cummins; Abbey Theatre, 1914)
  • Fox and Geese (co-written with Geraldine Cummins; Abbey Theatre, 1917)
  • Sixes and Sevens (1918)[11]

Books
  • The Amazing Philanthropists (1916)
  • Round about Bar-le-Duc (1918)
  • Where the Mistral blows (1933)
  • St Martin's Cloak, unpublished draft novel[4]

Further reading
  • Keating, Sara (2 December 2015). "Fired from the canon: the fate of Irish female playwrights". The Irish Times. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  • O'Toole, Tina (2013). The Irish new woman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137349132., 216 pages
  • Welch, Robert (2003). The Abbey Theatre, 1899-1999 : form and pressure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199261352., 280 pages
  • Reynolds, Paige (2010). Modernism, drama, and the audience for Irish spectacle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521182393., 268 pages
  • Brennan, Fiona (2007). George Fitzmaurice : 'Wild in his own way' : biography of an Abbey playwright (Rev. ed.). Dublin, Ireland: Carysfort Press. ISBN 9781904505167., 211 pages
  • Pilkington, Lionel (2001). Theatre and the state in 20th century Ireland : cultivating the people (1st ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415069380., 272 pages
  • Kahan, Jeffrey (2013). Shakespiritualism : Shakespeare and the occult, 1850-1950 (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137282200., 270 pages

Notes
  1. "Residents of a house 10 in Ballinamought West (North East Ward, Cork), Census return". 1901.
  2. "Day, Susanne Rouviere (1875/6–1964), suffragist and writer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58627. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 30 August 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Maria Luddy, ‘Day, Susanne Rouviere (1875/6–1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 18 Nov 2017
  4. "Saint Martin's Cloak". Cork City Council.
  5. Gonzalez, Alexander G. (2006). Irish Women Writers: An A-To-Z Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 76–78.
  6. "Day, Suzanne R[ouvier]". The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature.
  7. Lorna Sage; Germaine Greer; Elaine Showalter (1999). The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge University Press. pp. 696. ISBN 9780521495257.
  8. National Probate Calendar
  9. McCormack, Chris. ""Them's the Breaks": Gender Imbalance and Irish Theatre". Exeunt Magazine:Feminism and Irish Theatre.
  10. "Susanne R. Day's Toilers - Her Lost Play - as reconstructed by Painted Bird". Painted Bird. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  11. Nicoll, Allardyce (1973). English drama, 1900-1930; the beginnings of the modern period. Cambridge [England]: University Press. p. 599. ISBN 0-521-08416-4. OCLC 588815.
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