Thomas D’Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857, vol. I David A. Wilson (McGill–Queen’s University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780773533578 Now a somewhat obscure figure, Thomas D’Arcy McGee is a prime subject for scholarly biography. As author David A. Wilson’s concluding paragraph notes, McGee went from extreme Irish republican to extreme Irish American Catholic to extreme … Read more
Fenians, freedmen, and Southern whites: race and nationality in the era of Reconstruction Mitchell Snay (Louisiana State University Press, $40) ISBN 9780807132739What do Southern Klansmen, their politically aroused former slaves and American-based Irish nationalists have in common? Not a lot, it turns out. Mitchell Snay aspires in this ambitious comparative study to tease out a … Read more
Irish Republicanism in Scotland, 1858–1916: Fenians in exile Máirtín S. Ó Catháin (Irish Academic Press, €24.95/£19.95 pb) ISBN 97807165 28586 During the heady days of 1867 and 1868, the Dublin rising, the Manchester Martyrs, the Clerkenwell prison bomb, the abortive raid on Chester Castle and many smaller episodes ensured that Fenianism generated endless column inches … Read more
A provisional dictator: James Stephens and the Fenian movement Marta Ramón (University College Dublin Press, €18.95) ISBN 9781904558651 James Stephens was not an original thinker like Karl Marx, Giuseppe Mazzini or Michael Bakunin: in fact, as Marta Ramón makes clear in her fine new biography, he could barely write a coherent sentence about politics. Nor … Read more
Kilmainham Gaol Inchicore Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8 +353 (0)1 4535984 /4532037 (fax), kilmainhamgaol@opw.ie April–Sept.: daily 9.30am–6pm (last admission one hour before closing) Oct.–March: Mon.–Sat. 9.30am–5.30pm; Sun. 10am–6pm Adult €5.30; senior/group €3.70; child/student €2.10; family €11.50 by Tony Canavan For many years Kilmainham Gaol was a shrine to Ireland’s struggle for freedom in which many Irish rebels were … Read more