Reminiscences of Daniel O'Connell

William Cooke Taylor (1800-1849), son of a Youghal manufacturer of Cromwellian descent, was one of the most significant liberal-Unionist commentators of the first half of the nineteenth century. Patrick Maume is a researcher with the Dictionary of Irish Biography, the author of The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891-1918 (Dublin: 1999) and he has edited several titles in the Classics of Irish History series.

"Taylor's style is engaging, his controversy may irk but his connection to the times is unique." Books Ireland Feb 2005 "University College Dublin Press has now published over thirty 'Classics of Irish History'. These contemporary accounts by well known personalities of historical events and attitudes have an immediacy that conventional histories do not have. Introductions by modern historians provide additional historical background and, with hindsight, objectivity." Books Ireland Nov 2007 "Unsympathetic at best and peppered with factual and interpretive errors, Taylor's account, in Maume's words, 'stands as a monument to mutual misunderstanding.' It reflects the fraught relationship between Irish nationalists and the British and Irish Whigs/Liberals who professed sympathy for Ireland but could only countenance their own prescriptions for the neighbouring island's ills. The tension produced by their different visions of Ireland and their distinct political needs in regard to Irish policy defined Anglo-Irish relations into the next century. "Taylor's work offer[s] fascinating partisan portraits of Europe's first great populist leader. Subsequent generations of nationalists managed to craft and deploy a useful popular memory of the Great Liberator, but th[is] work remind[s] us that O'Connell could be remembered rather differently. "Scholars of nineteenth-century Irish and Irish-American politics should reacquaint themselves with these classics, part of a long running and immensely useful series from University College Dublin Press. "Patrick Maume has edited and written the introductions for no less than nine of the books in this series, lending them his breadth of knowledge and keen analysis that have made him one of the most learned and intellectually generous young scholars in the field." Irish Literary Supplement Fall 2008

• Introduction by Patrick Maume; Reminiscences of Daniel O'Connell; Appendix I, Review of books by William Carleton, the Earl of Rosse and G. L. Smyth (Athenaeum, 13 March 1847); Appendix II Repeal Songs of Munster (Athenaeum, 30 September and 7 October 1843); Editor's notes