Doctors Recommend It! An Abbey Theatre Tonic in 12 Doses. Foreword by T.C. Murray. Dublin: Printed for the Subscribers by Colm O’Lochlainn at the Sign of the Three Candles, 1930. Pp, 29. Oblong 4to. Linen boards, title label to front cover; light staining to covers, contents in good condition.

Illustrated with twelve fine caricatures by Grace Plunkett & published in a Limited Edition of 500 Copies.

Grace Plunkett (nee Gifford) attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where she studied under Sir William Orpen, before moving to the Slade School of Fine Art in London. A talented artist, whose work focused on cartoons, Grace was active in the Republican movement despite being raised Protestant and living an affluent childhood.

She first met Irish nationalist, republican, poet & journalist Joseph Mary Plunkett in 1913 and came into direct contact with the future leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Joseph & Grace were to be married in a church on St Stephen’s Green on Easter Sunday, 1916, but history intervened. After the surrender & capture of the rebels he was tried and sentenced to death for his part in the Rising. At 8 p.m. May 3, he and Grace were married in the chapel in Kilmainham Gaol only a few hours before his execution. Just before he faced the firing squad he said ‘I am very happy I am dying for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.’ Grace never married again and she died in 1955.