Emilie Venturi letters to John Dillon.

Letters to the Irish nationalist leader John Dillon, including several sent during his imprisonment in Galway Gaol in 1891. Venturi offers support, political advice, and explanations of her own political and social convictions. Venturi disagreed strongly with Dillon's repudiation of Parnell during the Kitty O'Shea affair, and her letters express distress at this "desertion" on his part. Venturi also writes of her anticlericalism and antisectarianism, her belief in a "purer" or "higher" Christianity, and her disapproval of Dillon's theory that it is his "duty to feign belief." A lengthy letter of 1892 Apr 21 discusses Venturi's work for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and frames her support for women's rights in terms of a direct parallel between women as a subjected group and the Irish as a subjected race.

Other topics include reminiscences of Mazzini and of her father, the Radical and feminist William Henry Ashurst; books lent to Dillon and Venturi's opinions of authors including Byron, a particular favorite, Tolstoy, Edward Fitzgerald and Bret Harte; her admiration for Whistler's painting and her ownership of his "Chelsea in Ice."