Mary E.L. Butler

rdf:langString Mary E.L. Butler

rdf:langString Mary E. L. Butler (1874-1920) (Irish: Máire de Buitléir) was an Irish writer and Irish-language activist. Mary Ellen Butler was the daughter of Peter Lambert Butler and the granddaughter of William Butler of Bunnahow, County Clare. She was a close relative of Edward Carson In order to learn Irish she made several visits to the Aran Islands. According to her memoirs, which are in a Benedictine monastery in France, she was converted to the nationalist cause after reading John Mitchel's Jail Journal. From 1899 to 1904 she edited a women's page and also a children's page in the Irish Weekly Independent. She promoted the nationalist cause in both. She joined the Gaelic League, where she met Irish-language enthusiasts such as Evelyn Donovan, Agnes O'Farrelly and Máire Ní Chinnéide, and spent several years on its executive. In 1907, she married Thomas O'Nolan, who died in 1913. She was a close friend of Arthur Griffith and in a letter of condolence which Griffith wrote to her sister from Mountjoy Jail in 1920 he states that Mary Butler was the first person to suggest to him the name Sinn Féin as the title of the new organisation which he had founded. She died in Rome in 1920 and is buried there.