Eva Selena Gore-Booth was born in Lissadell in County Sligo, Ireland, on 22 May 1870, the third child of Sir Henry and Georgina (Hill) Gore-Booth. The daughter of Anglo-Irish landowners, she had a privileged childhood and was educated by governesses. Her sister, Constance, two years her senior, later gained fame as Countess Markievicz, imprisoned for her involvement in the 1916 Easter Rebellion. Gore-Booth published nine books of poems, seven plays, many pamphlets on feminist and political questions, several collections of spiritual essays, and a lengthy analysis of the New Testament Gospel written by St. John.

Three incidents from her childhood, as she recounts in "The Inner Life of a Child" (published posthumously in 1929), suggest the memories that structured Gore-Booth's characteristic literary themes. The first was the death of her grandmother, Lady Hill, the sister of the Earl of Scarbrough, when Gore-Booth was nine. In an action that came to typify her...