She was born
Anna Bella Johnston on 3 December 1864 in the
townland of Kirkinriola,
Ballymena,
County Antrim, the daughter of Robert Johnston, a timber merchant and a leading member of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, and Marjorie (Mage) Magee, who came from
County Donegal. Born in 1839 her father had grown up hearing stories from the last veteran
United Irishmen who had fought at the
Battle of Antrim and personally knew a number of
Young Irelanders from the 1840s before himself becoming involved in the 1867
Fenian rising. He later oversaw the re-organisation of the IRB in the 1880s and had hosted many of the future readers of the Easter Rising in his Antrim Road home in Belfast. Carbery's husband, the poet and folklorist
Seumus MacManus, called Robert Johnston the "
…connecting link that kept the spirit of freedom alive throughout more than a century." From the age of fifteen, when she had her first piece published, Carbery contributed poems and short stories to a number of Irish periodicals, including
United Ireland,
Young Ireland, the
Nation and the
Catholic Fireside. She participated in the nationalist commemorations of the
1798 Rising and with Alice Milligan,
Maud Gonne and others toured the country delivering lectures on the
United Irishmen. In 1900 she was a founder-member of
Inghinidhe na hÉireann, the revolutionary women's organisation led by
Maud Gonne. She was elected a vice-president of the association, along with
Jenny Wyse Power, Annie Egan and
Alice Furlong. She and Milligan wrote and produced plays as part of its cultural activities. Milligan resigned in solidarity and, working out of the offices of Robert-Johnston's timber yard, they launched their own independent monthly
The Shan Van Vocht, producing forty issues. Leading literary revivalist
Padraic Colum attributed its comparative success to "a freshness that came from its femininity". Carberry (still Johnston) and Milligan were joined as prominent contributors by
Alice Furlong,
Katherine Tynan,
Margaret Pender and
Nora Hopper. The first issue, January 1896, gave an early platform to socialist republican
James Connolly. and moved with him to Revlin House, just outside
Donegal Town in
County Donegal in the west of
Ulster. It was then that she began writing under the pen name of Ethna Carbery because once she took the last name of MacManus she didn't want to be confused with her husband (also a writer). Carbery died in Revlin House of
gastritis on 2 April 1902, aged 37. Her husband, who was three years her junior, outlived her by 58 years. At the fiftieth anniversary of her death, a public address was given by
Sinead de Valera in which she stated that "Among women poets Ethna Carbery would always hold the foremost place and, even though her life was short, it was full of devotion and idealism" (
Irish Press 2/4/1952). ==Works==