A biography of the 18th century revolutionary Edward Fitzgerald, the son of Emily Lennox, one of the sisters featured in ARISTOCRATS. The book naturally follows on from ARISTOCRATS and is planned to make, with her third book, a trilogy which describes the fortunes of the extended Lennox family between 1740 and 1850. Edward Fitzgerald was born in 1763. He spent his childhood in Ireland. 1780 he joined the army and sailed to America where he fought in the war for Independence. Back home he was elected to Irish Parliament and became a member of the Irish opposition. His political interests became increasingly radical, and he was eventually embroiled in the Irish rebellion, dying in prison. His life was extraordinary colourful and dramatic- as complex and interesting in its political dimension as in his love life. A magnificent sequel to ARISTOCRATS.
From Academy Award-winning film director Neil Jordan comes an artful reimagining of an extraordinary friendship spanning the revolutionary tumult of the eighteenth century. South Carolina, 1781: the American Revolution. An enslaved man escaping to his freedom saves the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a British army officer and the younger son of one of Ireland's grandest families. The tale that unfolds is narrated by Tony Small, the formerly enslaved man who becomes Fitzgerald's companion—and best friend. While details of Lord Edward's life are well documented, little is known of Tony Small, who is at the heart of this moving novel. In this gripping narrative, his character considers the ironies of empire, captivity, and freedom, mapping Lord Edward's journey from being a loyal subject of the British Empire to becoming a leader of the disastrous Irish rebellion of 1798. This powerful new work of fiction brings Neil Jordan's inimitable storytelling ability to the revolutions that shaped the eighteenth century—in America, France, and, finally, in Ireland.
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“...a fascinating and well-told story of the American Revolution in South Carolina—and of its ramifications across racial and national boundaries.” —Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History "The author brings to life the challenges and opportunities that the American Revolution brought to African Americans in the South in this engaging account of a free black man's wartime experience and postwar friendship with a British officer he rescued from the battlefield." —Jim Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South Until publication of this book, virtually nothing was known about Tony Small, the African American from South Carolina who helped further an existing revolutionary spirit of liberty in Ireland as much as Lafayette did in France. For the first time, Robert Black brings Small to life in a work of creative nonfiction that includes his influence upon Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the military commander in the United Irishmen’s revolution against British rule in Dublin between 1796–1798, whose life Small saved at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781. Tony Small is a real person, the main character in the book. Everyone else when named in the book is also a real person, and most are black. The book records the names of over two hundred documented African Americans and creates a fictional narrative for many of them. Their voices and Small’s in Part I give fictional context to moral, social, and revolutionary realities during America’s first civil war. The appendices, notes, maps, and exhibits in Part II firmly anchor fictional detail to historically recorded facts. By bringing to light the story of remarkable figures in eighteenth-century American, Irish, Canadian, English, and French history, the book is unequaled as a record of mutual respect and devotion between two men that begins on the level battle ground at Eutaw Springs. It also creates an account of African Americans not as mere slaves or free black men and women who do manual labor, but as soldiers and patriots of the highest order to help establish the new republic.
