Suzanne R. Day

Suzanne R. Day
From the cast of 1901 production of The Mikado, Cork
Born	Suzanne Rouvier Day 24 April 1876 Cork, Ireland
Died	26 May 1964 London
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	writer

Suzanne Rouvier Day (1876–1964) 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.

Biography

Day was born in Cork, Ireland in 1876 to Robert and Rebecca Day. Her father Robert ran a Saddler and Ironmonger business and was a well known antiquarian and photographer.^[1] She was active as a suffragette founding the Munster Women's Franchise League and as a member of the Irishwomen's Suffrage Federation. In 1911 she became one of Cork's first women poor-law guardians which lead to her first novel.^[2] 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).^[3][4] Day worked as a nurse on the French front during the First World War. 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 in London when she died.^[3][5]

The work of Suzanne R. 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.^[6]

Works

Plays

• Out of a Deep Shadow (1912)
• Toilers (1913)
• 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)

Books

• The Amazing Philanthropists (1916)
• Round about Bar-le-Duc (1918)
• Where the Mistral blows (1933)

External Sources

• The fate of Irish Female Playwrights
• The Irish New Woman, Tina O'Toole, Springer, 12 Jul 2013, 216 pages
• The Abbey Theatre, 1899-1999: Form and Pressure, Robert Welch, Oxford University Press, 2003, 280 pages
• Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle, Paige Reynolds, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 257 pages
• George Fitzmaurice: 'Wild in His Own Way' : Biography of an Abbey Playwright, Fiona Brennan, Peter Lang, 2005, 211 pages
• Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People, Lionel Pilkington, Routledge, 22 Jan 2002, 272 pages
• Shakespiritualism: Shakespeare and the Occult, 1850-1950, Jeffrey Kahan, Springer, 28 Feb 2013, 270 pages

Notes

1. "Census return 1901".
2. "(Source: Dictionary of Irish Biography, and Brendan Goggin)".
3. Alexander G. Gonzalez, Irish Women Writers: An A-To-Z Guide, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, pp.76–78.
4. "Oxford Biography".
5. Lorna Sage, Germaine Greer, Elaine Showalter (1999). The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge University Press. p. 696.
6. "Exeunt Magazine:Feminism and Irish Theatre".