Dame Mary Gilmore's life spanned almost a century and her influence was felt in almost every aspect of the Australian experience during the period 1890-1962. She was full of contradictions. A nationalist and Anglophobe, she was still happy to accept her title of Dame of the British Empire. A staunch campaigner for the Labor Party all her life, she ended by writing a column in the Communist Tribune. She extolled family and domestic virtues, yet lived for years in boarding houses, separated from husband and son.

Bill Wilde, examines Dame Mary's Celtic background, her childhood and adolescence in the pioneer years of the nineteenth century in the Australian bush, her years as a schoolteacher, her participation in William Lane's ill-fated socialist experimental colony in Paraguay, her long period as editor of the Women's Page in the Australian Worker during which she campaigned ceaselessly on behalf of the poor and underprivileged, and her growing stature in the Australian literary scene as her numerous books of poetry and prose were published.