Rosita Sweetman

Life
dg. of Irish barrister (State Solicitor/SC); brought up in “Derrybawn”, Foxrock; ed. Sacred Heart School, Killiney; Irish journalist and feminist activist associated wtih Mary Kenny, Nell McCafferty and others; author of Father Comes First (1972; reiss. 2016), the story of Elizabeth O’Sullivan and a runaway success which was revived by Lilliput in 2014; also On Our Knees (1972), and On Our Backs (1979); she is a friend of Aidan Higgins; children Chupi and Luke, resp. a jeweller and designer and a film-maker.

 

Works
Fiction, Father Comes First (London: Pan Books 1972, Joseph 1974, Pan 1977; reiss. Lilliput Press 2016), 192pp. Miscellaneous, On Our Knees (London: Pan Books 1972), 288pp.; On Our Backs: Sexual Attitudes in a Changing Society (London: Pan Books 1979), 250pp. [interviews].

 

Notes
Father Comes First (1972): a sentimental education - from school-days to young thing in the city to feminism - in which the central character, Elizabeth [“Lizzie”] O’Sullivan, is the Catholic daughter of a Trinity College [TCD] professor in Dublin from a background very like the author’s own who leaves convent school, loses her virginity to a boy called Henri in Paris, attends an expensive modelling course in Dublin where parents pay the rent on her flat, and mixes with the debutante and fox-hunting set; she graduates from several encounters with men in town; meets film-director Colin with a flat in Dollymount and falls in heavily love; experiences his sexist and abusive behaviour; meets a documentary-maker called Mary who puts her on the road to feminism ... (See review by Valerie Shanley in The Independent - online; accessed 17.11.2016; Sarah Gilmartin in The Irish Times, 10.12.2014 - online.)

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