Sally Cavanagh, Or, The Untenanted Graves. A Tale of Tipperary. Dublin: W.B. Kelly, 1869. First Edition. Pp, xxii, 210. Publisher’s green cloth boards, title to centre of upper cover in gilt, shamrock motif stamped in blind to each corner. Covers worn along extremities, faded and lightly scuffed; rear hinge cracked, but holding well. Contents in good condition.

Frontispiece portrait of the author, with facsimile signature, dedication to John O’Leary with sixteen page preface and short Note by the author, dated April, 1869. Ornate initials at the beginning of each chapter. The true first edition with an advertisments for Kickham’s ‘Poems, Sketches, and Narratives’ verso half-title page.

This copy with an Autographed Letter Signed from the Author, no year stated, written from his home at Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary (tipped-in at title page). 

Set in county Tipperary  Kickham’s novel explores themes of rural Irish life, social justice, and the struggles of the Irish peasantry during the 19th century.

Charles Kickham was born in 1828 at Cnoccenagow, which is two miles from Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary. It was in Mullinahone Charles Kickham wrote ‘Knocknagow’: or The Homes of Tipperary, the classic Irish popular novel of it’s time. His epitaph states that he was a ‘journalist, novelist, poet but before all a patriot’. In the1850’s Kickham developed his journalistic skills by writing in the local papers and he began to publish poems and short stories. Kickham joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)-popularly known as the Fenians, and in 1866, Kickham was sentenced to fourteen years in jail for being a member of the IRB. Through the 1870’s before his early death at the age of fifty-four, Kickham continued writing poetry and fiction adding to his novels ‘Sally Cavanagh’ and ‘Knocknagow’, ‘The Eagle of Garyroe.’

When Kickham was laid to rest in 1882 it was said: ‘Surely in some distant time when Irishmen visit the shrines of their illustrious dead this lonely Tipperary grave will not be forgotten’.