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"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.
"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.
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.
In "A Journey in Ireland 1921", originally published in 1922, Ewart
relates memories of his journey of April and May 1921. He
interviews prominent figures ranging from the Dublin Castle
spin-doctor Basil Clarke, Sinn Fein activists in Cork and Limerick
to Southern Unionists, former Home Rule MPs and the writer and
commentator AE (George Russell). His attempt at a walking tour
between Cork and Belfast led to his being interrogated both by
British forces and by the IRA; his account ends with a description
of Ulster Unionist public meetings addressed by James Craig and
Dawson Bates as the Northern Ireland parliament and government were
about to come into existence.A meticulous and intelligent observer,
Ewart finds himself caught between fellow feeling for embattled
British forces and dismayed at the state to which Ireland had been
reduced. His account provides a striking pen-portrait of Ireland in
the last stages of the War of Independence.
"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.
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.
'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,
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.
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