Comic biography of a true rebel with Cork roots

While the name of Margaret Sanger is largely unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic, this daughter of Irish emigrants became one of the leading birth control activists in the United States and founded the Planned Parenthood movement. Her fascinating, event-filled life has recently been brought to life in the graphic biography Woman Rebel, a title taken from one of her pamphlets.

Cartoonist Peter Bagge’s biography presents us with a deeply driven, left-leaning and thoroughly modern woman who was unafraid of challenging authority and courting controversy.

Born in rural New York in 1879 to Anne Purcell and Michael Hennessy Higgins, both of whom hailed from Cork, Sanger moved in very influential circles: John D Rockefeller Jr was a generous financial supporter of her cause and the writer HG Wells was one of her lovers.