author
Mrs. Hamilton Norway
d. 1932
An eyewitness to Dublin's 1916 Easter Rising, she turned family letters into a vivid first-person account of a city in upheaval. Her best-known book offers a close, immediate view of history as it unfolded around the General Post Office.
1 Audiobook
The Sinn Fein Rebellion as I Saw It.
by Mrs. Hamilton Norway
About the author
Best known as the author of The Sinn Fein Rebellion as I Saw It (1916), she wrote under the name Mrs. Hamilton Norway. Sources for the book and later library records identify her as Mary Louisa Gadsden Norway, and record her death in 1932.
Her account grew out of letters written during the Easter Rising in Dublin. Contemporary and later descriptions note that she was staying at the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dawson Street and was especially well placed to observe events, while her husband, Arthur Hamilton Norway, served as Secretary of the General Post Office in Ireland.
What makes her writing memorable is its directness: it preserves the uncertainty, fear, and fast-changing rumors of a major historical crisis as seen by someone living through it in real time. For listeners interested in firsthand history, her work offers a personal window onto one of the defining events of modern Irish history.