Maud Gonne, the legendary woman known as the Irish Joan of Arc, left her mark on everyone she met. She famously won the devotion of one of the greatest poets of the age, William Butler Yeats. Born into tremendous privilege, she allied herself with rebels and the downtrodden and openly defied what was at the time the world's most powerful empire. She was an actress, a journalist and an activist for the cause of Irish independence. Ignoring the threat of social ostracism, she had several children out of wedlock. She was an independent woman who charted her own course. Yet Maud Gonne was also a lifelong anti-semite, someone who, even after the horrors of the Second World War, could not summon sympathy for the millions murdered by the Nazis. A believer in the occult and in reincarnation, she took mescaline with Yeats to enhance visions of mythic Irish heroes and heroines, and in mid-life converted to Catholicism in order to marry her husband, the Irish Catholic war hero John MacBride. What motivated this extraordinary person? Kim Bendheim has long been fascinated by Maud Gonne's perplexing character, and here gives us an intensely personal assessment of her thrilling life. The product of much original research, including interviews with Gonne's equally vivid, unconventional descendants, The Fascination of What's Difficult is a portrait of a powerful woman who, despite her considerable flaws, continues to inspire.

Maud Gonne is part of Irish history: her founding of the Daughters of Ireland, in 1900, was the key that effectively opened the door of twentieth-century politics to Irish women. Still remembered in Ireland for the inspiring public speeches she made on behalf of the suffering—those evicted from their homes in western Ireland, the Treason-Felony prisoners on the Isle of Wright, indeed all those whom she saw as victims of imperialism—she is known, too, within and outside Ireland as the woman W. B. Yeats loved and celebrated in his poems.

Set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this romantic tale unfolds against a background of political unrest and tenant agitation in Ireland. The poet William Butler Yeats is a central figure in the Irish literary revival, while Maud Gonne, a political activist, is passionately involved in the struggle for Irish independence. But this is not a dissertation about Yeats' work, nor is it about the history of the day or the political involvements of Maud Gonne. It is a love story, containing some of the most poignant poems ever written.

This correspondence, which began when Gonne was 22 and Yeats was 23 and ended with his death, includes 373 of her letters but only 30 of his, since most of his were destroyed in the Irish Civil War. They are edited with complete notes identifying people and incidents likely to be unfamiliar to current readers. The introduction and connecting material provide biographical information and explain the circumstances in which the letters were written.

This biography pursues the story of what attracted Maud Gonne to a man like Lucien Millevoye, and what imprint the attachment left upon her.