Dublin-in-Print is holding an exhibition to formally launch its project which was established in December 1994 with the aim of creating a database index for The Freeman’s Journal. The exhibition will consist of a collection of articles from The Freeman’s Journal outlining the various issues which the paper reported upon in the winter of 1846/7. … Read more
Sir, —I greatly enjoyed Helena Kelleher Kahn’s piece on ‘The Yelverton Affair’ of 1861 (HI 13.1, Jan./Feb. 2005). A cause célèbre can be like a time capsule, accurately preserving incidentally forgotten aspects of history, society and sensibility. Ms Kahn is certainly right in saying that the Yelvertons had an ambiguous reputation. The founder of the … Read more
Radical politics in modern Ireland: the Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896–1904 David Lynch (Irish Academic Press, €39.50) ISBN 0716533561Written by a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), this book belongs to a sub-genre of labour history that sees history-writing as instrumental and is at pains to draw lessons regarding present-day socialist politics and … Read more
DONNELLY, Dan (1788–1820), pugilist, was born in Townsend St., Dublin, eldest surviving son (having been predeceased by four sets of twins) of seventeen children of Joseph Donnelly, carpenter, of Dublin; his mother’s name was Gore. Typical of his chosen sport, his life is one in which reality and mythology are not easily separated. Legend holds … Read more
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a devoted and courageous advocate of Irish freedom, but this aspect of his life has long been downplayed or ignored. When he was alive, his poetry was rarely published and his prose ignored. He lived as an outcast from his family and his class. Shelley despised the England he grew up … Read more