Unsurrendered Spirits: The Prison Writings of Dorothy Macardle  is an exhibition exploring the life and work of writer Dorothy Macardle. Macardle was an unlikely rebel. She came from a wealthy Dundalk-based brewing family and taught in Alexandra College but became involved in the Irish revolutionary movement through her friendship with Maud Gonne. She supported the Anti-Treaty side during the Civil War which led to her arrest and imprisonment in Mountjoy Prison November 1922. She was later transferred to Kilmainham Gaol in February 1923 and was released in May of that year.

Macardle’s time in prison gave her the opportunity to explore her interest in creative writing and led to the publication of a collection of gothic short stories in 1924 called Earth-bound: Nine Stories of Ireland. She dedicated each of the nine stories to a fellow female republican prisoner and the exhibition includes objects related to each of these nine women, including the suffragist and socialist Rosamond Jacob and Nora Connolly O’Brien, the daughter of the 1916 leader James Connolly.

Dorothy Macardle continued to explore paranormal themes in her fiction following her release from prison. Her novel, The Uninvited, was adapted and turned into an Oscar nominated film in 1944 starring Ray Milland. She was also a pioneering historian and journalist. Her book, The Irish Republic, was one of the first in-depth histories of the modern struggle for Irish independence. She also worked as a journalist for the Irish Press, Radio Éireann and the BBC. Following World War II she mounted an investigation into the devastating effects of World War II on children and published her findings in a book entitled Children of Europe which appeared in 1949. She died in a Drogheda hospital in 1958 aged 69.