Life
She was born and raised a Methodist in Gortmore, near Omagh, County Tyrone. Milligan's father was the writer Seaton Milligan, antiquary and member of the RIA. Alice was one of eleven children and from 1877 to 1887 attended Methodist College, Belfast, after which she completed a teacher-training course. Together with her father she wrote a political travelogue of the north of Ireland in 1888, Glimpses of Erin. She wrote her first novel, A Royal Democrat, in 1890.
After the death of Parnell she became an ardent nationalist. In 1894 with Jenny Armour she founded branches of the Irish Women's Association in Belfast and other places, and became its first president. With Ethna Carbery she founded two nationalist publications in the 1890s, The Northern Patriot, and later The Shan Van Vocht, a monthly literary magazine published in Belfast from 1896 to 1899.
She was a figure of the Irish literary revival, and a close associate of Douglas Hyde. She was also 'on first-name terms' with WB Yeats, James Connolly and Roger Casement. Tomas MacDonagh, writing in the Irish Review in September 1914, described her as 'the best Irish poet of his generation'.
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