Irish Rebels in English Prisons: A Record of Prison Life. Author’s Autographed Edition. New York: P.J. Kennedy, [1882]. Pp xiv, [vii], 442. Publisher’s olive green buckram, title in gilt to upper cover and spine. Light shelf-wear to covers, contents in nice bright condition. Housed in collector’s solander box.

Two frontispiece portraits, one Signed by the Author. 

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was born Jerry Donovan in Rosscarbery, County Cork in 1831. In 1856 he founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society ‘for the liberation of Ireland by force of arms.’ He was jailed in 1858 and accused of plotting the Fenian Rising in 1865. Tried for High-Treason he was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Released in 1871 he was exiled to America & took up residence in New York and started The United Irishman newspaper. He raised £40,000 for the Fenian movement and funded the Holland Submarine Project. He died in New York in 1915 and was returned to Ireland for a hero’s burial.

The graveside oration, given by Pádraig Pearse, remains one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement, stirring his audience to a call to arms. It concluded with:

” the fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”