Rossa’s Recollections 1838-1898. Introduction by Seán Ó Lúing and a New Index. Shannon: IUP, 1972.. Pp 410. Green buckram boards, in publisher’s pictorial dust jacket. A very good copy.

Facsimile reprint of the first edition published 1898.

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 and sentenced to penal servitude for life, released in 1871; he was exiled to America. In New York he edited the United Irishman. He raised £40,000 for the Fenian movement and funded the Holland Submarine Project. He died in NYC in 1915 and was returned to Ireland for a hero’s burial with Padraig Pearse reciting his famous oration at his graveside.