Nesca A. Robb

Life
[Nesca Adeline Robb] 1915-76; b. Ulster; ed. Oxford (DPhil, 1932); issued Neo-platonism and the Italian Renaissance (1935); became Advisory Officer and Register of Women’s Employment Fed., London, 1939-45; settled in N. Ireland after the war; issued Four in Exile (1948), studies of A. E. Housman, Leopardi, Christina Rossetti and Hans Andersen; issued William of Orange [2 vols.] (1962, 1966); elected President of Irish PEN, 1968-69; issued An Ulsterwoman in English, 1924-41 (1942); ed., with Sam Hanna Bell and John Hewitt, The Arts in Ulster: A Symposium (1951).

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Works
  • Neo-platonism and the Italian Renaissance (London: George Allen & Unwin 1935), and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Octagon Books 1968), 315pp.
  • An Ulsterwoman in English, 1924-41 (Cambridge UP 1942), viii, 175pp.
  • Four in Exile (London: Hutchinson [1948]), 158pp.
  • The Fare of Princes: A Renaissance Manual of Domestic Economy [Italian Studies, 7] (London Univ. 1952).
  • William of Orange: A Personal Portrait, Vol. 1: 1650-1673 (NY: St Martin’s Press 1962), [x], 307pp., ill. [pls., ports., map., & gen. table.]; and Do. Vol. 1: 1674-1702 (1966), xii, 580pp. [available at Internet Archive - online [limited preview].
  • A History of Richmond Lodge School (Belfast: McCaw, Stevenson & Orr Ltd [1969?]), 99pp.,ill. [2. pls.].
See also Poems (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1939), 40pp.

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Quotations
The Irish question: ‘Past solution of the Irish question, however reasonable and unanswerable, have always sufffered from one crucial defect; they have left out the Irish with their inbred [509] partisanship; their amazing capacity for self-absorption in the midst of swiftly changing international events; and all the imponderables that count for more than reason or interest. [...] I hope they may not have too tragic an awakening, or learn that they can no longer live unto themselves through the bitter experience of living in an invaded country.’ (Quoted in Pierce, op. cit., 1000, pp.509-10; see full extract in Google Books [online; accessed 08.11.2009].)

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References
David Pierce, ed., Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader, Cork UP 2000) contains an extract from An Ulsterwoman in English, 1924-41 (1942) - here pp.508-11.

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