Blanaid Salkeld

Blánaid Salkeld (born Florence Madeline ffrench–Mullen; 10 August 1880 – 18 December 1959) was a Bengali–born Irish poet, playwright, actor, publisher, salonnière, translator, and reviewer. Salkeld's literary salon was attended by, among others, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien.

Spending her childhood in Dublin, her father was a friend of Rabindranath Tagore and also introduced her to the poetry of Keats.

Career In Dublin, she joined the Abbey Players as an actor, using the Irish form of her name, Blánaid (then spelled Blathnaid) and the stage name Nell Byrne. She played the lead role in George Fitzmaurice's three-act play The Country Dressmaker. Her first volume of poetry, Hello Eternity, was praised by Samuel Beckett. She founded the Irish Women's Writers' Club with Dorothy Macardle in 1933.

She co-founded the Gayfield Press with her son, Cecil, in 1937. It operated from the garden shed at their home at 43 Morehampton Road until 1946. The press was a small Adana wooden hand press. The Salkelds later loaned the press to Liam and Josephine Miller in 1951, with which they founded the Dolmen Press.

During the preparations for the Easter Rising, a room on the first floor of 130 St Stephen's Green which she had lent to Thomas MacDonagh was his headquarters.

Her work is considered overlooked within the canon of early 20th century Irish poetry, as it was neither of the Celtic revival or modernist.

On 18 December 1959, Salkeld died in Dublin aged 79.

Poetry Salkeld published five books of poetry:

Hello, Eternity (Elkin Mathews 1933) A Dubliner (Dublin: Gayfield 1942) The Fox’s Covert (JM Dent 1935) The engine is left running (Gayfield 1937) Experiment In Error (Aldington, Kent: Hand & Flower Press 1955)