Life
1770-1866; b. Belfast; sis. of Henry Joyce McCracken, with whom she corresponded during his imprisonment; her papers are a major source for Belfast social history; appears as a character in Rosamund Jacob, The Rebel’s Wife (1957).
Criticism
Mary McNeill, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770-1866 [1960] (Belfast: Blackstaff 1997) [see details]. See also Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong, eds., The Women of 1798 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998).
Mary McNeill, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken 1770-1866, A Belfast Panorama (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1960), pp.328 and genealogical chart. CONTENTS, Chps. incl. Francis Joy; Henry and Robert Joy; Captain and Mrs McCracken; Childhood and Adolescence; The United Irishmen; The Revival of Irish Music; Reform or Revolution; Kilmainham, Pt. I; Kilmainham, Pt. II; Antrim; Thomas Russell; Interlude; The Turning Point; The Ladies Committee; The Last Years; bibl.; refs.; gen. tree; index.
Quotations
Slavery of women: Mary Ann McCracken wrote to her br. in prison: ‘There can be no argument produced in favour of the slavery of women that has not been used in favour of general slavery [...] I therefore hope that it is reserved for the Irish nation to strike out something new and to shew an example of candour, generosity and justive superior to any that hve gone before them.’ (Quoted in Nancy Curtin, ‘Women and Eighteenth-Century Irish Republicanism’, in Margaret MacCurtain & Mary O’Dowd, eds., Women in Early Modern Ireland, Wolfhound 1991, pp.133-44; cited in MacCurtain, ‘Irish Women and Nationalism’, in Irish Review, No. 17 Winter 1996/7, pp.9.)
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