Dora Sigerson Shorter was born in Dublin on 16 August 1866. The eldest daughter of George Sigerson, a surgeon and Gaelic scholar, and Hester Varian Sigerson, a writer, Dora was educated at home in an environment that instilled in her the Republican values that later characterized her poetry. The Sigerson home was a center for artistic and political culture in Dublin, and her parents' interests thus led to Dora's involvement with the Pan Celtic society in 1888 and to her support of controversial Charles Parnell, who led the fight for Irish home rule in the late nineteenth century.

Another significant influence on Sigerson's early life was William Butler Yeats, a writer whose role in the Irish Literary Renaissance of the period continued to inspire her long after she left Ireland. As a mentor and a colleague, Yeats shared with Sigerson a love for their impoverished and strife-torn country, a desire to...