The Gates Flew Open
The Gates Flew Open

Author: Peadar O'Donnell

Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd

Published: 2013-08-17

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1781172250

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Peadar O'Donnell became involved in Irish Republicanism through his initial involvement in socialism, as an organiser for the ITGWU. When he was unsuccessful in establishing a branch of the Irish Citizen Army in Derry he joined the IRA and led Guerilla activities in Donegal and Derry during the War of Independence. He was firmly opposed to the treaty signed at the end of the war and wrote 'The middle class was getting all they wanted, namely the transfer of patronage from Dublin Castle to the Irish parliament. The mere control of patronage did not seem to me sufficient reason for the struggle we had been through.' He was a member of the executive of the anti-treaty IRA, and was in the Four Courts when it was attacked by the Free State forces. He was arrested shortly afterwards and was involved in organising a hunger strike among the anti-treaty Republicans which lasted 41 days. It was while in prison that he began writing 'to escape the bare walls of the prison cell' and this is a story of prison life in the midst of Civil War in Ireland that combines glimpses of humour with moments of tragic poignancy as he describes games of handball and bridge with men who faced the firing squad withing twenty-four hours. O'Donnell was one of the last survivors of the Independece struggle in Ireland, retaining his radicalism and idealism right up to his death in 1986 at the age of 93.

Peadar O'Donnell
Peadar O'Donnell

Author: Alexander Gonzalez

Publisher: Dufour Editions

Published: 1997-04-28

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0802360947

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The first comprehensive examination of one of Ireland's leading social novelists of this century. No other Irish novelist has succeeded so completely in rendering rural Irish life as Peadar O'Donnell. From the minutest details of life on tiny islands to the broader sweep of townland life in mainland Donegal, O'Donnell manages to re-create rural Ireland in a deeply intimate and moving way. Gonzalez's "reader's guide" provides the first thorough assessment of O'Donnell's complete literary output, both the fiction and non-fiction. He also places O'Donnell in the context of Irish literature in general, showing how his fiction relates to that of his contemporaries, including George Moore and James Joyce, as well as to that of modern Irish literature in general. His novels, The Knife, about the Civil War, The Big Windows, about rural Donegal, and Islanders, about the poverty and struggles of a small island community, probably provide the most unsentimental and honest portrait of Irish life written by any Irish writer this century. His vision of his homeland is complex and many-layered, affectionate yet unsentimental, and always honest. Alexander G. Gonzalez is Professor of English at Cortland College of the State University of New York and has published extensively on contemporary Irish literature.

Spiritual Wounds
Spiritual Wounds

Author: Síobhra Aiken

Publisher: Merrion Press

Published: 2022-03-01

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1788551672

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This book challenges the widespread scholarly and popular belief that the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) was followed by a ‘traumatic silence’. It achieves this by opening an alternative archive of published testimonies which were largely produced in the 1920s and 1930s; testimonies were written by pro- and anti-treaty men and women, in both English and Irish. Nearly all have eluded sustained scholarly attention to date. However, the act of smuggling private, painful experience into the public realm, especially when it challenged official memory making (or even forgetting), demanded the cautious deployment of self-protective narrative strategies. As a result, many testimonies from the Irish Civil War emerge in non-conventional, hybridised and fictionalised forms of life writing. This book re-introduces a number of these testimonies into public debate. It considers contemporary understandings of mental illness and how a number of veterans – both men and women – self-consciously engaged in projects of therapeutic writing as a means to ‘heal’ the ‘spiritual wounds’ of civil war. It also outlines the prevalence of literary representations of revolutionary sexual violence, challenging the assumptions that sexual violence during the Irish revolution was either ‘rare’ or ‘hidden’.

The Gates Flew Open
The Gates Flew Open

Author: Peadar O'Donnell

Publisher: Hassell Street Press

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9781013533594

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Liam Mellows
Liam Mellows

Author: Conor McNamara

Publisher: Merrion Press

Published: 2019-08-16

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1788550803

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This landmark new study of the life of Republican leader Liam Mellows gathers letters, speeches, articles and IRA documents from archives in Ireland, the UK and the United States together for the first time to form an insightful analysis of Mellows’ short but dramatic life. It examines his beliefs, fraught personal relationships, political betrayals and intrigue, and his struggle in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. Mellows was at the forefront of the Republican movement from its inception. After the Easter Rebellion, he spent four years as the representative of the IRA in the United States, but his time there was deeply unhappy: jailed in the infamous Tombs Prison while his comrades dithered over his bail, he was also branded an informer by the Mayor of New York. Back in Ireland in 1920, Mellows was responsible for buying and distributing arms during the War of Independence. Bitterly opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he was a key opponent of Michael Collins, and his role in occupying the Four Courts in June 1922 was central to the outbreak of the Civil War. His execution by the Free State in December 1922 was one of the most divisive moments in the foundation of the state, and he remains an enigmatic icon for Irish republicans to this day.

Political Thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century
Political Thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century

Author: D. George Boyce

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-03-07

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1134981368

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These pioneering essays provide a unique study of the development of political ideas in Ireland from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The book breaks away from the traditional emphasis in Irish historiography on the nationalism/unionism debate to focus instead on previously neglected areas such as the role of the Scottish Enlightenment and early Irish socialism and conservatism. A wide range of original primary sources are used from pamphlets to journalism, devotional tracts to poetry.

Dance in Chains
Dance in Chains

Author: Padraic Kenney

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0199375747

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A study of the role of political imprisonment in the modern world in regimes ranging from communist to fascist to colonial to democratic.

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh

Author: Robert W. White

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 025304832X

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A biography and analysis of the influential Irish political and military leader. At his death in 2013, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh remained a divisive and influential figure in Irish politics and the Irish Republican movement. He was the first person to serve as chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, as president of the political party Sinn Féin, and to have been elected, as an abstentionist, to the Dublin parliament. He was a prominent, uncompromising, and articulate spokesperson of those Irish Republicans who questioned the peace process in Northern Ireland. His concern was rooted in his analysis of Irish history and his belief that the peace process would not achieve peace. He believed that it would support the continued partition of Ireland and result in continued, inevitable, conflict. The child of Irish Republican veterans, Ó Brádaigh led IRA raids, was arrested and interned, escaped and lived “on the run,” and even spent a period on a hunger strike. Because he was an effective spokesman for the Irish Republican cause, he was at different times excluded from Northern Ireland, Britain, the United States, and Canada. He was also a key figure in the secret negotiation of a bilateral IRA-British truce in the mid-1970s. In a brief afterword for this new edition, author Robert W. White addresses Ó Brádaigh’s continuing influence on the Irish Republican Movement, including the ongoing “dissident” campaign. Whether for good or bad, this ongoing dissident activity is a part of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s enduring legacy. “A tour de force. Indispensable for all Irish studies collections. . . . Essential.” —Choice