HISTORIC MEMOIRS OF IRELAND; COMPRISING SECRET RECORDS OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION, THE REBELLION, AND THE UNION; WITH DILINEATIONS OF THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS CONNECTED WITH THESE TRANSACTIONS (TWO VOLUMES)

Barrington, Jonah

Published by For Henry Colburn, by Richard Bentley, London, England, 1833

Quarto, 12.8 in. x 10 in., Volume I: pp. xlii, 358; Volume II: ix, [3], 464. Illustrated with forty-one full-page engraved portraits, and many facsimile manuscript letters of the correspondence discussed in the text. Contemporary half calf with decorative rule in blind over marbled boards. Gilt title on red panel, and five raised bands decoratively ruled in gilt, to spine. Publisher's speckled red stain to edges. Rubbing to extremities. Corners nudged and exposed. Title page of Volume I present, but detached. Previous owner's name in small print to front pastedown of Volume I. Jonah Barrington (1756-1834) himself on the orthodoxy of his political and religious views Liberty I love; democracy I hate; fanaticism I denounce (Barrington, Personal sketches, i, p. xi) he was strongly opposed to the growth of popular disaffection in the 1790s. In 1795, believing that the state was under threat, he joined the Aldermen of Skinner's Alley, the first Orange association ever formed , and became at once, not indeed an ultra, but one on whom loyalty absorbed almost every other consideration . He was a member of a Dublin Orange lodge and (from 1796) a lieutenant in the lawyers yeomanry cavalry corps, but he was no extremist and during the 1798 rebellion deplored the atrocities of government forces and rebels alike. In 1809 he published the first volume of his Historic memoirs of Ireland, a second volume followed in 1832. He claimed that it was written primarily to expose the corruption employed in passing the act of union, but others alleged that he published only after his efforts to blackmail the government had failed. It was afterwards reissued as The rise and fall of the Irish nation (1833). (from Dictionary of Irish Biography.). Seller Inventory # 86596

Bibliographic Details

Title: HISTORIC MEMOIRS OF IRELAND; COMPRISING ...
Publisher: For Henry Colburn, by Richard Bentley, London, England
Publication Date: 1833
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Edition: Second Edition.