Few have shown such lack of enthusiasm for appointment as a librarian as Thomas Russell! He was with Wolfe Tone in Dublin when he heard the news on 17 January 1794: ‘Find I am ele[c]ted to the librarianship at Belfast, which [Wolfe Tone] and [Whitley] Stokes have put me out of conceit of’. Russell’s radical … Read more
Michael Dwyer of Imaal, Wicklow, joined the United Irishmen in the spring of 1797 and fought as captain of a Talbotstown rebel corps during the 1798 Rebellion. Having seen action in Wexford and Wicklow, including severe fighting at Ballyellis and Hacketstown, Dwyer returned to the familiar mountains and valleys of his native county to prosecute … Read more
It was commonplace in the late 1970s and early 1980s for political historians to venture that the imbalance in Lecky’s coverage of the eighteenth century, which prompted him to devote three of his seminal five-volume History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century to the 1790s, would soon be remedied. This expectation was informed primarily by … Read more
Despite the enormous wealth of sources, and much superb ethnic historiography over the course of two centuries, the story of 1798 and the United Irish diaspora has consistently escaped the attention of mainstream political historians. One obvious example was the prodigious nineteenth-century biographer R.R. Madden who invariably concluded his memoirs of numerous United Irish exiles … Read more
Tom Dunne (Lilliput Press, 320) ISBN 1843510391 In this ambitious and often deeply personal book, Tom Dunne offers his own perspective on Irish history, on the process of historical commemoration and on current interpretations of the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford. Dunne’s book is divided into three quite distinct parts that might each have formed the … Read more