Classics of Irish History – serie

In the autumn of 1835, as the Orange Order faced a parliamentary inquiry and the imminent prospect of being banned, an 'Old Orangeman', signing himself 'Montanus', wrote a series of articles defending the Orange brethren and telling their story. Almost forgotten since first publication, these articles together form a unique and intelligent view from inside the Order in its first cycle. Montanus discusses the Orangemen's self-organisation by the Protestant peasantry of County Armagh in 1795, their struggle against the United Irishmen, dissensions over the Act of Union, feuding with the Catholic nationalist Ribbon Society, extraordinary influence on the government of Ireland and their last-ditch opposition to Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic Emancipation.Old Orangeman was a product of eighteenth-century Enlightened thought and became an eloquent warning voice against the perils of toleration and liberalism. He had been associated with the Order from its birth. He knew both its leading men and their deadly enemies, including Theobald Wolfe Tone. Most striking, perhaps, is Old Orangeman's carefully argued justification of the Order as a timely and irreplaceable bulwark against the rising tide of democracy and radicalism.These 'Letters from an Old Orangeman' are not just a personal memoir or a one-sided history, but a carefully argued political treatise on the necessity of mobilising and organising the 'reactionary democracy' in an age of popular politics. Their republication now is an important contribution not only to the history of sectarian discord in Ulster and Ireland. It supplies an important source for the study of popular conservatism and the psychology of counter-revolution in the United Kingdom and beyond.Montanus feared that he, who had 'rocked the cradle' of the Institution, might now be fated to 'follow its hearse'. His letters instead provide an unrivalled insight into one of Ireland's most tenacious and consequential survivals.

The Victory of Sinn Fein, originally published in 1924, contains eyewitness accounts of the events in Ireland 1916-23, written from the viewpoint of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Joseph Johnston was an Ulster Protestant Liberal, in favour of Home Rule by Britain. He published this book in 1913 to persuade the majority of Ulstermen that the dangers they saw were imaginary, and that avoiding Home Rule was not worth a civil war. He examined the events leading up to the massive arming of the Orangemen. He made the case that Home Rule had many positive features, and that none of the perceived negative features were worth fighting a civil war to avoid. In the Classics of Irish History series, this is its first reprinting since 1914.

This publication contains Standish James O'Grady's important but little-known pieces from "The Irish Worker", written in 1912-13. Although O'Grady has usually been regarded as a Protestant unionist, he was always a maverick and, later in life, shared the columns of "The Irish Worker" with socialists such as Jim Larkin, James Connolly and Sean O'Casey. He makes militant statements against capitalism and uses military vocabulary to advocate a commune system. He would not have supported armed insurrection, yet his rhetoric is a stirring call for action.

Two memoirs written in the late 1950s by Robert Brennan, a republican activist in the early years of the twentieth century, journalist and close associate of Eamon de Valera. "Ireland Standing Firm" is a frank and pungent account of Robert Brennan's time as Irish Minister (in effect Irish Ambassador) in Washington immediately before and during the World War II. Brennan provides an account of his efforts in defending Irish neutrality and his meetings with leading American officials and politicians, including Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the second memoir, Brennan describes his close association with Eamon de Valera from their first meeting in prison in 1917 until de Valera's retirement as Taoiseach in 1959.

An account of life at the grassroots during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War by the Officer Commanding, 2nd Battalion, West Limerick Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Mossie Harnett (1893-1977), who fought on the Anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, describes his early life on a farm in Tournafulla in the southwest corner of Limerick, his enrolment in the Irish Volunteers in 1915, and his involvement in the conflict until his release from a Free State prison in 1923. In an appendix, the British troops' little-known and short-lived practice of taking hostages in order to protect themselves is vividly described by Mossie's cousin, Dr Edward Harnett, who was taken hostage in spring 1921.

"Michael Collins rose to his feet. In repose his eyes glimmer softly and with humour. When aroused they narrow - hard, intense and relentless. He speaks like this. One or two words. Then he pauses to think. His speech does not flow in a stream as it does in the case of Eamon de Valera. Yet from not one word is firmness absent." This work provides eye-witness accounts by two reporters from the Irish Independent newspaper of the historic Treaty debates of Dail Eireann, held in University College Dublin's Earlsfort Terrace building in December 1921 and January 1922. Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and a host of other participants come to life. The colourful descriptions of the scene and of the reactions to speeches, written while the debates were in progress, are far more revealing than the published record of the debates.

Oliver MacDonagh described the first edition of "Ireland: The Union and its Aftermath", published in 1968, as "a very small book with very large themes". The book rapidly reached the status of a classic and remains a thought-provoking survey of the history of Ireland from the Act of Union of 1800 until modern times. It has been unavailable for a long time. MacDonagh regarded the Act of Union as the most important single factor in shaping Ireland as a nation in the modern world. Although subordination to Britain had influenced Irish development before 1800, it took a rapidly different form under the Act of Union: "The experience of being assimilated by, and resisting assimilation into, a powerful and alien empire - perhaps the master-culture of the 19th century - was truly traumatic." For the second edition, published in 1977, which is reprinted here with a new introduction by W. J. Mc Cormack, MacDonagh included a chapter on the period 1968-73, taking account of the early years of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

Michael Davitt's "Jottings in Solitary" consists of his drafts on many topics, written while a prisoner in solitary confinement in Portland Convict Prison, 1881-2. The "Jottings" (Davitt's title) have not been published before and contain a valuable autobiographical fragment and a frankly annotated list of Irish MPs of the time. Davitt gives his views on many other subjects, including an account of his arrest; his random thoughts on the Irish land war; how Ireland was robbed of her Parliament; on Ireland's share of the British Constitution as seen in its Government and Parliamentary franchise; and essays on English civilization and on the education of the Irish citizen.

First published in 1904 and twice reprinted, this book strongly influenced nationalist debate between 1904 and 1921. Its central proposal - the withdrawal of Irish elected representatives from Westminster - was inherited from the Hungarian Franz Deak's policy of non co-operation with the imperial parliament in Vienna in the 1860s. The idea of the dual monarchy, adopted by Austria and Hungary in 1867 in which each recognised the Austrian Emperor but had separate parliaments, continued to be advocated by a few Irish politicians as late as the 1920s. Griffith also expounds here his protectionist economic views which influenced Irish government policy for several decades.

"The Repealer Repulsed" is an account of Daniel O'Connell's visit to Belfast in January 1840. Henry Cooke, the celebrated Presbyterian leader, publicly challenged O'Connell to debate Repeal during the visit. O'Connell refused to debate Cooke, partly because of his unwillingness to elevate his rival's stature but also for fear of violence. In contrast to O'Connell's usual triumphant rallies, the Belfast visit produced extensive rioting and the planned ceremonial welcomes for O'Connell in border towns were cancelled for fear of disorder. O'Connell himself travelled in disguise. Written and published in haste to discredit O'Connell, this book has been described as a foundation text of Ulster unionism. It contains one of the earliest statements of the economic case for Ulster unionism and provides valuable insight into the construction of political Protestantism.

Thomas Fennell provides an account, previously unpublished, of life in the Royal Irish Constabulary during the turbulent 30-year period, 1875-1905. His early accounts begin during the Land Wars, and continue up to the Irish War of Independence, although by that time he was no longer serving in the force himself. Fennell was always an ardent nationalist, conscious that the RIC was a conservative body, supporting the Ascendancy and the landowning class. He criticises the repressive behaviour of the large police force dispersed in the countryside in some of its day-to-day activities. Yet he retained a loyalty to the force and explains that during the Land War the population at large understood that the police were carrying out work which they often found distasteful.

'To be sure I hated Ireland most cordially; I had never seen it, and as a matter of choice would have preferred New South Wales, so completely was I influenced by the prevailing prejudice against that land of barbarism!' Thus Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna recalled in her memoirs her view of Ireland as she had set off for that country in 1818. But she came to love Ireland, so much so that after her death her grave was planted with shamrocks. In this abridged version of the second edition of Personal Recollections (1847), Tonna gives a vivid account of her time in Ireland, of the violent activities of the Rockite movement in the mid-1820s in Kilkenny-Tipperary, and of the apocalyptic ultra-Evangelical 'siege mentality' during the Tithe War and the run-up to Catholic Emancipation. It is also a valuable memoir of her religious and literary development,

Sun and Wind was Standish James O'Grady's last work, which he was editing at the time of his death in 1928. Some parts of it were published as journal articles in his lifetime, but most is published here for the first time. Edward A. Hagan describes O'Grady as 'at once a political polemicist, a creative writer, and a somewhat unusual historian', involved in all three roles in this utopian treatise which 'reveals the pervasive influence of classical scholarship upon the Irish intellectual life of the period'. O'Grady argues for drastic change in Ireland in the first part and in the second makes extensive use of classical Greece as a model for Ireland.

The essays in Parnell and His Island caused outrage in Ireland when first published in the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1886. They were published in English in book form the following year and represent Moore's interpretation of life in Ireland in the early 1880s, written in his combative and naturalistic style. In some respects the work addresses similar themes and can be seen as a companion piece to his famous novel, A Drama in Muslin. Moore, the eldest son of a Catholic landlord and Home Rule MP, spares neither landlords nor tenants, priests or nationalists in his narrative. Yet his depictions of the Irish landscape are often lyrical and memorable and he gives a vivid impression of the atmosphere of the country in the short period between the Land War and the Plan of Campaign. Until the publication of this edition Parnell and His Island was a rare book. Some sections included in the original French version, but expurgated by the English publisher, have been restored here, with translations, in the notes.

Belfast Politics, arguably one of the most important texts in modern Irish history, appeared in 1794 as a collection of twenty essays outlining a moderate political position in the increasingly polarised politics of 1790s Ireland. It contains the seeds of the so-called 'transformation' of so many late eighteenth-century Ulster radicals into the Unionists of the early nineteenth-century. Although sharing many of the political principles and much of the language which inspired the United Irishmen, including support for the American Revolution and the use of civic humanist and Enlightenment discourse, Bruce and Joy maintained that these ideas were consistent with, and best served within, the framework of the British constitution, and their book was unique in bringing an inclusive notion of 'Britishness' to the mainstream Irish reform movement.

This very vivid memoir describes the prison experiences of a Cork Fenian activist, John Sarsfield Casey. 'The Galtee Boy' was a name used by Casey when he sent letters for publication to newspapers, one of which was used against him at his trial in 1865. His memoir was written after he had returned from deportation and describes the period from his arrest in 1865, his trial in Cork and conditions in Mountjoy, Millbank, Pentonville and Portland prisons. His memoir is the most extensive surviving account from the Fenian side of the experiences of those prisoners detained in Cork. Biographies of people mentioned in the memoir are given in an appendix.

The Green Republic, a novel first published in 1902, actually describes real characters and events at the turn of the century in Poyntzpass, Co. Armagh. O'Gara's fictional town of Jigglestreet in South Tyrone accurately represents the real Poyntzpass where O'Gara, under his real name - William Robert MacDermott (1839-1918) - worked as a dispensary doctor. The 'novel' is both a sophisticated sociological study of rural Ulster Protestants and a political argument for instituting joint stock company management of Irish agriculture. For MacDermott, the 'Green Republic' was an ironic title used not to describe Irish nationalism but to express his fears about the rise of the new force in agriculture - the former tenant farmers who were gaining title to their land. MacDermott believed that as long as irresponsible power remained in the hands of the old landlords or the new owner/occupiers, Irish agriculture would never operate to maximise production for the common good. The introduction is written by Edward A. Hagan.

The Hanbidge family originated in Gloucester, and came to Ireland in the seventeenth century. They have been settled in the Donard/Dunlavin area ever since, with branches in Dublin, and elsewhere. The Hanbidge memoirs provide a vivid and unique account of Protestant 'small farmer' life in West Wicklow in the nineteenth century, together with recollections of the 1798 rebellion. There are also glimpses of Jonathan Swift and members of the Synge family. Wiliam Hanbidge wrote at the behest of his daughter, setting down in a simple but detailed manner the life of his family, their farming practices, past-times, communal relations, religious views, and awareness of the outer world. His account of travelling to New York after the Famine with a party of boys is especially fascinating. No comparable account of his social group and class has ever been published. Mary Hanbidge's devoted private publication of her father's memoirs was eclipsed by the outbreak of the Second World War, when many copies were destroyed by bombing.

Soon after Daniel O'Connell's death, Taylor published (as 'A Munster Farmer') this short account of the Liberator's life, drawing on his personal memories and on articles he had written for the Athenaeum in the 1840s. It includes eyewitness accounts of O'Connell's appearance as he walked through the streets of Dublin. Taylor shows personal sympathy for O'Connell as the leader of oppressed people, but he also sees his talents as distorted by the experience of oppression and by a conservative upbringing, and claims that his abusive and truculent oratory did as much to retard Catholic Emancipation as his tactical leadership did to advance it. This edition also includes a review article by Taylor in the Athenaeum of books including Carleton's Famine novel, The Black Prophet, and a long article on 'Repeal Songs of Munster', considering O'Connellite street-ballads as a study in human folly.

Mitchel's account of the Repeal campaign, the Famine and the 1848 Rising, which originally appeared in Mitchel's Tennessee-based newspaper, The Southern Citizen, in 1858. Mitchel was a significant and controversial figure. Last Conquest, originally written as a riposte to American Nativist hostility to Famine immigrants, is well known in Famine debates for its claim that the Famine was a deliberate act of genocide by the British government.

Annie O'Donnell left her native Galway for America in 1898, one of 15,175 Irish women who left that year; they far outnumbered the men, and most of them went into domestic service. She became friends with Jim Phelan on the ship to Philadelphia. He was a 22-year-old farmer from Co. Kilkenny who had run away from home during Sunday mass to join his uncle, a tilesetter in Indianapolis. Annie went to work as a children's nurse for the W. L. Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Her letters to Jim Phelan, published here for the first time, are a unique contribution to the growing literature on women's emigration: they provide a sustained three-year narrative of her life as a children's nurse. Annie O'Donnell had been well educated in Ireland and her letters are lively and enjoyable to read. Maureen Murphy has provided an introduction and notes to the letters. Annie O'Donnell (1880-1959) was born in Lippa, near Spiddal, Co. Galway. She emigrated to America in 1898, remaining there and marrying James P. Phelan. She lived in Pittsburgh until her death.

This eloquent memoir provides an unrivalled insight into the life of a child reared in a working-class Irish Catholic community in late nineteenth-century Britain. No other author succeeds in depicting so vividly the texture of a life delimited by manual work, home and community ties as experienced by Irish migrants of the period. At the same time, it charts the tortuous route by which a young man struggled to free himself from a life of manual labour by using his literary talents to become a journalist and a popular novelist. Published in 1916, it reflects the world and assumptions of an emigre community between the failure of the Fenian movement and the Easter Rising, and it includes a telling vignette of the aged Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. An insightful picture of the world of those Home Rule supporters who lived outside Ireland emerges from this book.

"The Lady Next Door", in other words, Ireland, is an account of the tour of Ireland by a pro-Home Rule British Liberal journalist, published in 1914. It provides valuable interview material and personal impressions of several prominent Nationalists and Southern Unionists, giving a snapshot of the views of key activists on what they thought was the eve of Home Rule and their expectations of what a Home Rule Ireland would be like. He gives valuable insight into the ideological tensions of the Liberal-Nationalist alliance, particularly with reference to Nonconformist unease about the prospects for Ulster under Home Rule, the development of moralist rhetoric in defense of Liberal policy, and the tendency of some British commentators to idealize Ireland as a pious rural Arcadia.

"Michael Davitt: From the Gaelic American" tells the story of a collaboration between two giants of late nineteenth-century Irish nationalism: John Devoy and Michael Davitt, in the formulation of the New Departure and the early emergence of the land agitation. Devoy (1842-1928), a Fenian who assisted James Stephens in his escape from Richmond prison, only later to be imprisoned himself for administering the Fenian oath, was to spend most of his adult life in exile in the United States. He was a leading figure in Clan na Gael and a journalist for the "New York Herald" and later edited the "Gaelic American", in which this account of Davitt was serialised. Michael Davitt (1846-1906), once a major figure in the Irish Republican Brotherhood went on to found the Irish National Land League. Although both men shared similar hopes for the Irish nation their methods and approaches were to diverge, and they fell out in 1882. This memoir is particularly informative for the period between 1878 and 1880, when the New Departure was initiated. However, Devoy asserts that Davitt remained more loyal to the Fenian ideals than most of his contemporaries recognised.

First published between 1898 and 1900 as a series of articles in the "New Ireland Review", "The Philosophy of Irish Ireland" was the most forceful manifesto produced by that section of the Gaelic Revival movement which saw Irish identity as inextricably Catholic and Gaelic. The book addresses the growing Catholic professional class educated in secondary schools run by religious orders, and attempts to instil a collective consciousness in this nascent elite. It shows that the Gaelic Revival would not inevitably lead to separatism; it could also be deployed in the service of an aggressively reinvented less deferential 'Catholic Whig' politics. It includes a new introduction by Patrick Maume.

First published in 1802, "An Essay on Irish Bulls" was intended to show the English public the talent and wit of the Irish lower classes. Originally devised by Maria's father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Irish Bulls is an informal philosophic dialogue on the nature of Bulls (logical absurdities) and jokes and jests in general. Published at the time of the Union, the overarching theme is the confusions of identity and the relationship of Irish people to the English. This highly entertaining work has not been published as a single book since the nineteenth century. The editorial material and text for this edition are reproduced from the "Pickering & Chatto Novels" and "Selected Works of Maria Edgeworth", vol. 1. New introduction for this edition is by Jane Desmarais.

"The Open Secret of Ireland", published in 1912, consists of articles primarily focused on Home Rule, offering both historical and contemporary analyses. The collection includes three articles focused on Unionism, particularly on Ulster Unionism, and Kettle's description of 'The Hallucination of Ulster' provides a fascinating insight into nationalist ideas about the fragility of the unionist bloc and the unreasonableness of their cause. This revealing and intriguing collection offers many insights into the motivations of the old Home Rule generation, convinced that their day had come and utterly unaware of the radical course Irish politics were to take in the next ten years. This edition includes an original introduction by John Redmond. It contains a new introduction by Senia Paseta.

"In Belfast by the Sea" originally appeared as a series of 61 articles in the "Belfast Telegraph", 1923-4. They comprise Moore's recollections of Victorian Belfast and Bangor between his childhood in the 1860s and his departure for London in 1892. Highpoints are a tour of the city centre in which he recollects the shops and public buildings as they were in his youth, his reminiscences of his education at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and his description of the city's musical and theatrical life. His descriptions of the development of the city's water and transport networks include an account of the first public appearance of the Dunlop inflatable tyre and travelling conditions on the early railway services.