Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet,[1] theologian, and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist.

Both Eva and Constance were educated at home[2] and had several governesses throughout their childhood, most notably Miss Noel who recorded most of what is known about Gore-Booth's early life.

Gore-Booth was troubled by the stark contrast between her family's privileged life and the poverty outside Lissadell, particularly during the winter of the Irish Famine (1879) when starving tenants would come to the house begging for food and clothing.

Esther Roper later remarked that Gore-Booth was "haunted by the suffering of the world and had a curious feeling of responsibility for its inequalities and injustices.

"[3] Gore-Booth's father was a notable Arctic explorer and, during a period of absence from the estate in the 1870s, her mother, Lady Georgina, established a school of needlework for women at Lissadell.

The women were trained in crochet, embroidery and darn-thread work and the sale of their wares allowed them to earn a wage of 18 shillings per week.

She kept diaries and documented their travels in "Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Florida, New Orleans, St Louis, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Niagara, Montreal and Quebec.

The following year she traveled around Europe with her mother, sister Constance, and friend Rachel Mansfield and, while in Venice, fell ill with a respiratory condition.

In 1896, while recuperating at the villa of writer George MacDonald and his wife in Bordighera, Italy, she met Esther Roper, the English woman who would become her lifelong companion.

This led to the founding of the Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile and Other Worker's Representation Committee by Gore-Booth, Esther Roper and Sarah Reddish.

The end of 1909 saw Eva Gore-Booth help to run the radical suffragist general election campaign at Rossendale where once again a candidate was put forward but was defeated.

Also in 1911, she participated in the suffragette 1911 census boycott,[8] and on 17 November of the same year she was a member of the deputation representing the working women of the north of England.

Gore-Booth continued to work for peace, writing poetry and for a privately circulated journal, Urania, for the rest of her life.

[4] The two women formed a strong attachment during the weeks spent together at the villa of writer George MacDonald and his wife in Bordighera which led to a partnership, privately and professionally, until Eva's death in June 1926.

[14] One of those poems appears in a collection ofher poetic work "The Travellers, To E.G.R" which was published by Roper in 1929 and in which she uses analogies of music and song to express how deeply she was struck by her partners personality and charisma.

[14] During World War I, Gore-Booth and Roper were actively involved in the British Peace Movement along with fellow suffragists, such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Emily Hobhouse.

[20] Gore-Booth's sexuality has been a topic for debate among academics, and it is increasingly considered that she and Esther Roper were in a same-sex relationship, while some believe that the two women merely cohabited.

[13] After the time they spent there together Gore-Booth further rejected her privileged rural life in Ireland and moved into the urban Manchester environment.

Urania was ranged from eight to sixteen pages of compositions, magazines clippings, extracts and reports about sex changes and scientific methods, lesbian women in history as well as challenging and overcoming society's gender norms.

[27] Along with Cumann na mBan revolutionary lesbians Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Margaret Skinnider and Nora O'Keeffe, and Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan,[28][29][30][31][32] Gore-Booth was featured in a 2023 TG4 documentary about "the radical queer women at the very heart of the Irish Revolution": Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts).

[29][30] Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.